The Piano Lesson by August Wilson. New York. 1990. Dutton. 0525249265. 108 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - With his critically acclaimed works MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM, JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning FENCES, August Wilson has already offered three spellbinding chapters of his remarkable cycle of plays about the black experience in 20th-century America. Now, in his second Pulitzer Prize winner, THE PIANO LESSON, Wilson has fashioned his most haunting and powerful dramatic work yet, capturing the story of one black American family's struggle to remember and yet overcome the brutal legacy of slavery. It is Pittsburgh, 1936. The exuberant Boy Willie Charles bursts into his cautious, widowed sister Berniece's life with a truckload of watermelons to sell and the dream of buying the same Mississippi land that his family had worked as slaves. At the heart of his plan rests the family's prized possession, the upright piano which stands gathering dust in the front parlor of the house where Berniece and her daughter now live. More than an old heirloom, the ornate piano is an emblem of the Charles family's enslaved past, and carved into its legs are proud portraits of lost relatives. When Boy Willie locates a buyer who is willing to pay $1100 for the piano, Berniece refuses to sell, clinging to the piano as a reminder of the history that is their family legacy. This dilemma is the real ‘piano lesson.' August Wilson is reminding us that blacks are often deprived both of the symbols of their past and of opportunity in the present. A compelling and moving story, told in rich, evocative prose, THE PIANO LESSON resonates with the lyrical beauty we have come to expect of August Wilson's plays. In the words of Time magazine, his is ‘the richest theatrical voice to emerge in the U.S. since Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - August Wilson (Frederick August Kittel Jr.; April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005) was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". He is best known for a series of 10 plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle (or The Century Cycle), which chronicle the experiences and heritage of the African-American community in the 20th century. Plays in the series include Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990), each of which won Wilson the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988). In 2006, Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. August Wilson was born in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in a two-room apartment behind a grocery store on Bedford Avenue in the city's Hill district. He learned to read at age four. At fifteen he quit high school and began his self-education at the Carnegie Library. At twenty he dedicated himself to writing poetry and supported himself with a series of jobs: dishwasher, short-order cook, porter, toy store stock boy, gardener, and mailroom clerk. At thirty-three he left Pittsburgh for St. Paul, Minnesota, where he turned to play writing. In addition to MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM, FENCES, and JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE, August Wilson is the author of THE PIANO LESSON, which won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for drama, and TWO TRAINS RUNNING.

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