Myths, Stereotypes, Sexual Politics, and the Black Power Movement in Alice Childress’s Wine in the Wilderness

Abstract

This chapter examines playwright Alice Childress as an early challenger of Black Power ideology through an analysis of her 1969 play, Wine in The Wilderness, and contends that Childress frankly confronts the sexual and racial politics that characterized the public/political/theatrical arena of the 1960s and 1970s by rebutting some of the false notions and sexist rhetoric disseminated during the Black Power movement, namely, the stereotype of the Black matriarchy. Childress documents some of the tensions that arose between the sexes as a result of this myth and exposes the hypocrisy of the Black middle class who spouted slogans espousing racial pride while accepting negative self-definitions and harboring class prejudices. Given the often competing gender/sexual politics of the Women’s and Black Power movements, the chapter examines the message Childress sends about Black women’s roles and positions within their relationships and society and the resolutions that her play dramatizes as it pertains to gender politics.