Reviews for Boys Don't Cry?: Rethinking Narratives of Masculinity and Emotion in the U.S.

The average rating for Boys Don't Cry?: Rethinking Narratives of Masculinity and Emotion in the U.S. based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-06-25 00:00:00 Dena Ladner This is a comprehensive and well detailed history of African American theatre from the early 19th century to 2005. As the only group to be brought to the United States as slaves, this is a group whose history and struggles deserves to be better known than it is. Given these circumstances that they created a theatre and continuously tried to tell their stories through this medium is remarkable. Since as slaves they were not allowed to read, many of their stories were told through music. Gospel singing was always a part of their religion. The blacks took over the minstrel shows from the whites. Since many of them had white parentage, they often had to blacken their faces as they did so.. Bert Williams was an example of this. He was a tall, light skinned handsome man who blacked up for his career as part of Williams and Walker, touring the country. The authors show how rich the culture was as they look at the impact of touring companies of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the Caribbean influence, the Federal Theatre project, the role of black women in the theatre including black women playwrights such as Alice Childress. There were various groups such as the American Negro Theatre that worked to encourage productions that reflected the realities of black life in the United States. Playwrights such as Langston Hughes and Lawrence Dunbar produced works that were ground breaking in their time. There was always the conflict between the white audience's desire for black musicals such as In Dahomey as opposed to the serious dramas that many of the writers offered. There was also the problem of developing black audiences. There was discrimination on the part of Actors Equity as well as the conflict between actors playing European classics versus dramas reflecting the black experience and utilizing new forms of theatre such as the pageant or plays structured differently that the traditional European model . The richness of the work available as African American theatre people struggled to create their own unique theatre is impressive. For those who think that Lorraine Hansberry was the first black playwright, this book is a revelation about the richness of the work of playwrights, actors, musicians, choreographers and other artists in the African-American theatrical world over time. As informative as this book is it makes one want to delve further into the works and history it describes

Review # 2 was written on 2018-04-11 00:00:00 Christopher Kelsey Does a great job of tracing the different ideological growth and creative tensions of the different paradigms that make up Black Theatre to the present day.