Bøger af Shay Youngblood

Shakin' the Mess Outta Misery is the story of a young black girl's coming of age in the South in the 1960s. Daughter, the main character and 25-year-old narrator whose mother died when she was very young, was raised by women in the community, some blood related, some not. When she was 12 years old she began her journey to womanhood guided by these very diverse, non-traditional, older black women. Daughter begins the play as an adult reflecting on the summer of her 12th year in the now empty house of her childhood. She shares with the audience how her Big Mamas prepared her for womanhood. As she remembers, the women enter to tell their stories and Daughter becomes a child again reliving her vivid memories of growing up--recalling the rituals, the faith healings, the stories she was told and the lessons she learned about survival, healing, deep faith and mystery. The Washington Post said Shakin' the Mess Outta Misery "...is a vivid portrait of the members of a tight knit community of African American women...heartfelt and definitely a memory play, but it goes about its business in unpredictable and emotionally satisfying ways...First and foremost is Youngblood's evocative language, which blends the poetic and the everyday into a potent stew of exclamations and descriptions, oaths and jive...Some [scenes] are funny, some melancholy, some deadly serious, but all burst with detail, eccentricity and truth."

The Collected Plays of Shay Youngblood includes Shakin' the Mess Outta Misery, Flying Blind, Square Blues, Talking Bones and There are Many Houses in my Tribe.

Big Mama Stories is set in the South in the 1960's. Daughter, whose mother died when she was very young, is raised by the women in her community, some blood related, some not. At the age of twelve, she begins her journey to womanhood, guided by these diverse, non-traditional, older Black women. Daughter reflects on her vivid memories of growing up, recalling rituals, faith healings, storytelling and lessons she learned about survival.

Black Girl in Paris wends its way around the mythology or Paris as a city that has called out to African-American artists. Like James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, and Josephine Baker before her, Youngblood's heroine leaves her home, in the American South, nurturing a dream of finding artistic emancipation in the City of Light. She experiments freely, inhabiting different incarnations - artist's model, poet's helper, au pair, teacher, thief, and lover - to keep body and soul together, to stay afloat, heal the wounds of her broken heart, discover her sexual self, and, finally, to wrestle her dreams of becoming a writer into reality.

Black Power Barbie vol 1. love lives of heroes, is a hybrid novel about Tabitha X and her younger brother, Jackson Five, the children of murdered African American Civil Rights activists, battle for Black Power Barbie as they relive vivid and frightening memories in therapy sessions in the mid 1990's. As adults, Tabitha remains psychologically wounded, living in the past, while Jackson faces the reality of living with AIDS. They both discover romantic love and struggle to hold on to it while seeking justice for their parents' murder. Written in the form of a graphic novel with cinematic sensibilities.

"FAMILY PRAYER is a children's picture book in which a little brown girl finds joy by asking God to keep her family safe. But more than just her biological relatives, each family member is a maternal or paternal archetype, someone in her community who represents the title of mother, father, aunty, or the like"--