Abstract

SEDA, Owen. Solipsistic Breakthroughs or Stymying Collectives? Historical Duels in August Wilson's Radio Golf. JLS [online]. 2022, vol.38, n.4, pp.1-15. ISSN 1753-5387.  http://dx.doi.org/10.25159/1753-5387/12303.

August Wilson's place among the most significant chroniclers of African American history through the medium of fictional dramatic narratives is certainly not in doubt. Wilson consummated this through a project to write a cycle of 10 plays, each representing a significant moment in every decade of African American experience during the 20th century. August Wilson's 10-play cycle constantly dramatises the historical crossroads at which African Americans have found themselves as they contemplate which path to take on a ceaseless quest to find prosperity and establish enduring identities of the self in post-emancipation America. Wilson's plays often set up duels between antagonistic forces that represent the conflict between retaining old ground and identities of the past and the imperative to break with the past and start afresh. Coming at the end of Wilson's 10-play cycle, Radio Golf most poignantly represents these historical duels in ways that are reminiscent of the crisis of consciousness that has persistently assailed African Americans in their quest to make the right choices during the 20th century. Following W.E.B. Du Bois, I argue that Wilson's Radio Golf also presents this duel as a form of "double consciousness" or crisis of consciousness that makes it difficult for African Americans to make an easy choice at these crossroads.

Keywords : August Wilson; Radio Golf; African American drama; black history; solipsism; crossroads; crisis of consciousness; memory.

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