The revisionary aesthetic of Suzan-Lori Parks: hear the bones sing, write it down

The revisionary aesthetic of Suzan-Lori Parks: hear the bones sing, write it down Public Deposited

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Creator

Larson, Jennifer
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Abstract

This project examines how Suzan-Lori Parks’s works in every genre—not just her plays, but also her novel and screenplays—look back to literary and cultural artifacts in order to interrogate and to invigorate their legacies. Parks thus creates a new text that is both separate from and linked to its ancestor. The new text stands alone as its own story, but it also challenges the reader to see the old story again with new eyes, to re-envision its legacy, paying special attention to its impact on American history and African American identity. The project focuses on In the Blood’s relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter; on how the main characters in Venus and Topdog/Underdog are molded by the histories that name them; on how and why the women of Girl 6 and Their Eyes Were Watching God challenge the film industry’s traditional female representations; and on Getting Mother’s Body’s quest to embody literary repetition and revision through its signification on William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Light in August.

Date of publication