will do magic for small change by andrea hairston

My Grandfather and Great Aunt were inspirations as were Aida Overton Walker, a turn of the 20th century African American performer, and Zitkala Sa, a Yankton Dakota Sioux writer, musician, educator, translator, feminist, and activist. Are Redwood, Aidan, or any of the other characters in the novel inspired by or based on specific individuals? I wanted to celebrate people loving and believing in each other in a world that would otherwise make them invisible to themselves and each other. I wanted to bring to life their joys and the impossible challenges they faced. I wanted to dig into the experiences of African American and Indigenous American theatre and film folk at the turn of the 20th-century. That’s what we could say sitting in our comfy 21st century reality. I was teaching a course that investigated Blackface Minstrelsy and Wild West Shows and some of the students proclaimed that they would never have acted in those kinds of shows. What was your inspiration for Redwood and Wildfire? Her latest novel, Redwood and Wildfire, is the winner of 2011 Otherwise Award and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award, and she recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog. She has received the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts Distinguished Scholarship Award for outstanding contributions to the criticism of the fantastic. In her spare time, she is the Louise Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor of Theatre and Africana Studies at Smith College.

Dick and Otherwise awards, and winner of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award. She is the author of Mindscape, shortlisted for the Phillip K. Andrea Hairston is a novelist, essayist, playwright, and the Artistic Director of Chrysalis Theatre.

Will do magic for small change by andrea hairston