Abstract
This chapter discusses the multifaceted use of the grotesque in selected plays by Suzan-Lori Parks. It examines how Parks restages the conceptualization of the black female body as grotesque in Venus, analyses the grotesque re-enactments of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by black impersonators in two formally very different dramas, The America Play and Topdog/Underdog, and discusses the first part of Parks’s current dramatic cycle, Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3), which grafts the journey of African Americans from slavery to emancipation onto Homer’s The Odyssey. The chapter argues that the grotesque in Parks’s work serves not only as a weapon for social protest that gives voice to the oppressed, but also as a device that helps defuse any hegemonic counter-discourse.
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Pilný, O. (2016). Mutabilities: Suzan-Lori Parks. In: The Grotesque in Contemporary Anglophone Drama. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51318-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51318-2_5
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