Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora
Volume 1, Number 1
Spring-Summer 1999

African Women In Theatre

Aishah Rahman

Table of Contents

• Letter from the Editor
• Poetry
  Devorah Major

  i have been a coward all of my life
  first person singular
  black lit class and ellison's invisible man
  brown lady in white

  Amy Du Bois Barnett

  Do Not Uncover Buried Things

  Mary Weems

  The Gift
  Grist for the Mill
  The most important sound in the world is your heartbeat
  I'm in the hot-sauce place
  The Last Laugh

  Yona Harvey

  If Someone Were to Look Down
  

  keith antar mason

  at night's end
  

  John Taylor

  The Smart One
  

  Monica A. Hand

  River Goddess
  All in a Name

• Fiction

  Arlene McKanic

  The Bridge

  Vanissa Thurman

  Siren Song

• Play

  Aishah Rahman

  Only in America

• Interviews

  Aishah Rahman

  The Jazz Aesthetic of Aishah Rahman

  Abena John Brown

  When I go Searching for Those Who Did not Return

• Criticism

  Glenda Dicker/sun

  Sweetpeas and Black-eyed Susans

  Thadious M. Davis

  Aishah Rahman's Writing In The Dark: The Presence Of An Absence

  Don Evans

  Alice: Conversations with Alice Childress

  L. Teresa Church

  A Write of Passage To Becoming A Playwright

  E. Barnsley Brown

  'The human body in motion': Writing the Body/Righting History in the Plays of Ntozake Shange

  Karen Chandler

  Funeral Imagery in Maya Angelou's . . .Caged Bird Sings

  Ama S. Wattley

  Barriers to Connecting: Black Sexual Politics in Aishah Rahman

  Osonye Tess Onwueme

  Drumbeats in Black Women's Drama

  Lynda M. Hill

  Seeing The Mirage

• Book Review

  Afaa Michael Weaver

  Contemporary African American Female Playwrights

• Scrapbook

  Play Productions of Aishah Rahman

• Contributors