Kia Corthron Livres

"The hotly anticipated first novel by lauded playwright and The Wire TV writer Kia Corthron, The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter sweeps American history from 1941 to the twenty-first century through the lives of four men, two white brothers from rural Alabama, and two black brothers from small-town Maryland, whose journey culminates in an explosive and devastating encounter between the two families. On the eve of America's entry into World War II, in a tiny Alabama town, two brothers come of age in the shadow of the local chapter of the Klan, where Randall a brilliant eighth-grader and the son of a sawmill worker begins teaching sign language to his eighteen-year-old deaf and uneducated brother B.J. Simultaneously, in small-town Maryland, the sons of a Pullman Porter, gifted six-year-old Eliot and his artistic twelve-year-old brother Dwight, grow up navigating a world expanded both by a visit from civil and labor rights activist A. Philip Randolph and by the legacy of a lynched great-aunt. The four mature into men, directly confronting the fierce resistance to the early civil rights movement, and are all ultimately uprooted. Corthron's ear for dialogue, honed from years of theater work, brings to life all the major concerns and movements of America's past century through the organic growth of her marginalized characters, and embraces a quiet beauty in their everyday existences. Sharing a cultural and literary heritage with the work of Toni Morrison, Alex Haley, and Edward P. Jones, Kia Corthron's The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter is a monumental epic deftly bridging the political and the poetic, and wrought by one of America's most recently recognized treasures."-- Provided by publisher

Red Bull Theater – New York City’s “most exciting classical theater” – offers the 5th volume of collected plays from its popular annual Short New Play Festival. It features sixteen 10-minute plays of heightened language and classical themes by today’s hottest writers, from commissions by established playwrights Kia Corthron, Marcus Gardley, and Theresa Rebeck, to winning entries by writers such as Leah Maddrie, Matthew Park, Bridgette Dutta Portman, and Matthew Wells, chosen from a competition that receives nearly 300 submissions each year. In the hands of great playwrights, the 10-minute play is a highly entertaining dramatic form. These delightfully compact works – some downright silly, and others powerfully moving – are from the ninth and tenth years of Red Bull Theater’s Short New Play Festival. Dive in and enjoy! Authors Kate Abbruzzese, Ben Beckley, Kia Corthron, Avery Deutsch, Marcus Gardley, Terry Glaser, Leah Maddrie, Talene Monahan, Matthew Park, Eric Pfeffinger, Bridgette Dutta Portman, Theresa Rebeck, David Lerner Schwartz, Matthew Wells, Mallory Jane Weiss, Sofya Levitsky-Weitz.

Set in the Five Points neighbourhood of New York City in the years 1857-1863, when America's attitudes towards people of colour and slavery shifted - painfully, transformationally - to the point where a war that began to restore the union becomes one that owes much to black fighting regiments, and common cause grows for the abolition of slavery. We experience the daily life of Five Points through the eyes of Theo, aged 7 at the start of the book and 13 at its close. Theo is half Black and half Irish, an orphan living between the homes of her Black and Irish grandparents. Through her eyes we see everything from P.T. Barnum's circus to the Draft Riots that tore NYC asunder, and the daily maelstrom of work and camaraderie and hardship necessary just to survive in Five Points.

The collection features three politically charged plays by Kia Corthron, exploring themes relevant to contemporary society. Accompanying the plays is a personal essay that delves into Liberia's political landscape, providing deeper context to the works. Additionally, the book includes a preface by Michael John Garces and an insightful interview with the playwright, enriching the reader's understanding of Corthron's artistic vision and the socio-political issues she addresses.

A young Ethiopian man named Abebe navigates his college life in Maryland while grappling with his unique blend of Christianity and ecology. The play explores his relationships with the family hosting him, addressing pressing themes of drought and social injustice. Through their interactions, it presents a poignant mix of realistic human emotions and fantastical elements, highlighting the urgent need for awareness regarding the scarcity of essential resources.