THE STORY: From Lynn Nottage, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of such plays as Fabulation and Intimate Apparel , comes this haunting, probing work about the resilience of the human spirit during times of war. Set in a small mining in Democratic Republic of the Congo, this powerful play follows Mama Nadi, a shrewd businesswoman in a land torn apart by civil war. But is she protecting or profiting by the women she shelters? How far will she go to survive? Can a price be placed on human life?
Received its world premiere at The Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, on November 8, 2008.

20 page overview of superstitions, stereotypes, women in culture, women in business, religion, and more.

A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage places this renowned, award-winning playwright's contribution to American theatre in scholarly context. The volume covers Nottage's plays, productions, activism, and artistic collaborations to display the extraordinary breadth and depth of her work.

Includes an interview with Nottage.

Includes these chapters: Debby Thompson -- Intimate look at the plays of Lynn Nottage ; Interview with Lynn Nottage / Sandra G. Shannon.

Critics have long suggested that August Wilson, who called blues "the best literature we have as black Americans," appropriated blues music for his plays. Reading Wilson's American Century Cycle alongside the cultural history of blues music, as well as Wilson's less discussed works, his interviews, the polemic speech "The Ground on Which I Stand," and his memoir play "How I Learned What I Learned" Maley shows how Wilson's plays deploy the blues technique of call-and-response, attempting to initiate a dialogue with his audience about how to be black in America. After August further contends that understanding Wilson as a bluesman demands a reinvestigation of his forebears and successors in American drama, many of whom echo his deep investment in social identity crafting. Wilson?s dramaturgical pursuit of culturally sustainable black identity sheds light on Tennessee Williams?s exploration of oppressive limits on masculine sexuality and Eugene O?Neill?s treatment of psychologically corrosive whiteness. Today, the contemporary African American playwrights Katori Hall and Tarell Alvin McCraney repeat and revise Wilson?s methods, exploring the fraught and fertile terrain of racial, gender, and sexual identity. After August makes a significant contribution to the scholarship on Wilson and his undeniable impact on American drama.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has become one of the world's bloodiest hot spots. 2003 saw the end of a five-year war in which millions lost their lives - one of the deadliest conflicts since World War II. Despite recent peace agreements and democratic elections, the country is still plagued by army and militia violence. Congo remains deeply troubled, since the deep-rooted causes of conflict have not been adequately addressed. The conflict in the DRC has divided opinion; some call it a civil war, or a war of aggression by the country's neighbours; others a continuation of Rwanda's Hutu-Tutsi conflict on Congolose soil, and a war of partition and pillage. The prevalence of rape and sexual violence has led some analysts to mark it out as a hidden 'war against women'.

Every time you use a cell phone or log on to a computer, you could be contributing to the death toll in the bloodiest, most violent region in the world: the eastern Congo. Rich in "conflict minerals”--valuable resources mined in the midst of armed conflict and egregious human rights abuses--this remote and lawless land is home to deposits of gold and diamonds as well as coltan, tin, and tungsten, all critical to cell phones, computers, and other popular electronics. In Consuming the Congo, veteran journalist and author Peter Eichstaedt goes into these killing fields to find what is behind the bloodshed, hearing the stories of those who live this nightmarish reality. He talks with survivors of villages decimated by war and miners slogging knee-deep in muck, desperately digging up the gold, tin, and coltan on which Western culture depends. While these men work with picks, shovels, and iron bars, marauding militias and renegade army units who control the mines roam the jungles, killing and raping with impunity, taking their profits, and leaving villagers to a life of grueling manual labor, brutality, and disease. Some five million Congolese have died unnecessarily, the worst loss of human life since World War II, yet the pillaging and bloodletting continue at a frightening pace. Consuming the Congo not only explores the violence suffered by the Congolese but also examines how we, as part of the problem, can become part of the solution.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of women become victims of sexual violence in conflict zones around the world; in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone, approximately 1,100 rapes are reported each month.