‘What About the Burn Their Bra Bitches?’: debbie tucker green as the Willfully Emotional Subject

Abstract

This chapter draws on Sara Ahmed’s The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004) and Willful Subjects (2014) to think about some of the more challenging and belligerent aspects of debbie tucker green’s woman-centred dramaturgy, including its use of strong, often negative, emotions, and its refusal of dramaturgical norms. The chapter traces willfulness as an aspect of tucker green’s characterization with particular focus on the figure of Dawta in born bad (2003). It also considers the willful emotionality of tucker green’s work with a particular focus on tucker green’s random (2008). The chapter’s aim is to show that tucker green’s plays trouble boundaries between the private and the public, and make important connections between the subjective and the social, and the emotional and the political in the postcolonial moment.