Notes from the Field

"Smith's powerful style of living journalism uses the collective, cathartic nature of the theater to move us from despair toward hope." --The Village Voice

Anna Deavere Smith's extraordinary form of documentary theater shines a light on injustices by portraying the real-life people who have experienced them. "One of her most ambitious and powerful works on how matters of race continue to divide and enslave the nation" (Variety).

Smith renders a host of figures who have lived and fought the system that pushes students of color out of the classroom and into prisons. (As Smith has put it: "Rich kids get mischief, poor kids get pathologized and incarcerated.")

Using people's own words, culled from interviews and speeches, Smith depicts Rev. Jamal Harrison Bryant, who eulogized Freddie Gray; Niya Kenny, a high school student who confronted a violent police deputy; activist Bree Newsome, who took the Confederate flag down from the South Carolina State House grounds; and many others. Their voices bear powerful witness to a great iniquity of our time--and call us to action with their accounts of resistance and hope.

Author: Anna Deavere Smith
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Anchor Books
Published: 05/21/2019
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.10w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780525564591