![]() Hagar and her dramatic progeny may seem unthreatening-playwrights ranging from Marc Connelly to James Baldwin have all written some version of Hagar, whose own literary predecessor was Aunt Chloe, the paradigmatic Mammy of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” whose “whole plump countenance beams with satisfaction and contentment from under her well-starched, checked turban”-but they are not uncomplicated, especially if, like Parks, you are willing to look beyond the head scarves and listen for all that they don’t or can’t say. Ever since the jazz singer Ethel Waters donned a head scarf to portray the self-sacrificing Hagar in the 1939 production of Dorothy and DuBose Hayward’s “Mamba’s Daughters,” black American female characters have, for the most part, had to renounce their sexuality in order to make their mark onstage. Suzan-Lori Parks’s early plays were, among other things, an attempt to help rid the American stage of its continuing fascination with Mammy melodramas-stories that showcase stereotypically all-accepting, sexless, selfless black women. ![]() Elizabeth Marvel as a Texas waitress in “The Book of Grace.” Illustration by Divya Srinivasan ![]()
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