Wilson's Legacy

August Wilson is a renowned playwright who left a unique legacy. August Wilson began his incredible writing career in high school. He attended three high schools before getting his diploma from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Wilson switched out of one of his high schools because he felt he wasn't challenged enough (August Wilson Center for African American Culture). Wilson was such an incredible writer even then that he “dropped out of Gladstone after a teacher accused him of plagiarizing a 20-page paper on Napoleon” (August Wilson Center for African American Culture). Throughout his career, Wilson wrote many poems and plays, and he helped found a theater workshop group, and an actual theater as well. Wilson’s real legacy is his ten play cycle, each covering a different decade of the 20^th century. The cycle is the only one of its kind and “chronicle the African American experience in 20^th century America” (August Wilson Center for African American Culture). The plays are set where Wilson grew up, and have many of his own ideas and experiences incorporated in them. Because of the uniqueness of the cycle, this is Wilson’s biggest legacy he left for the world.

                Because the ten play cycle is from the African American’s experience, it sheds light on their lives in a way that other people might never have realized. In the history of the United States, African Americans have had different experiences and treatments than say white people. The plays that Wilson has written might be able to reveal just how different the races have been treated in the past, and how they have been oppressed from positions of power. Wilson’s legacy might be able to show people the differences and similarities in people’s everyday lives and how our language, attitudes, power, and race affect each person.