Crumbs from the Table of Joy and Other Plays

Lynn Nottage's work is a crucial contribution to American literature. She writes her plays with an intricacy, like a seamstress meticulously reweaving and tailoring an old wool suit for a new body. Referances to African American women playwrights who came before her, ie. Lorrainne Hansberry, Alice Childress, Adrienne Kennedy--are too easy. I think what Arthur Miller did for American theater, returning us to our backyards and digging up the soil to expose the roots, can easily be said of Nottage.