Pearl Cleage

Pearl Cleage ( ; born December 7, 1948) is an African-American playwright, essayist, novelist, poet and political activist. She is currently the Playwright in Residence at the Alliance Theatre and at the Just Us Theater Company. Her works are highly anthologized and have been the subject of many scholarly analyses.

Early life and education Pearl Cleage was born on December 7, 1948, in Springfield, Massachusetts, and is the younger of two daughters of Doris Cleage (née Graham), an elementary school teacher, and Rev. Albert Cleage, founder of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church and the Shrine of the Black Madonna. Her father changed his name to Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman in conjunction with the founding of his church. From 1966 to 1969, Cleage enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she studied playwriting and produced two one-act plays as a student. In Atlanta, she attended Spelman College, where she attained a bachelor's degree in drama in 1971. Upon graduation from Spelman, Cleage enrolled in graduate school at Atlanta University. She has made contributions to the literary world through several mediums as a playwright, essayist, novelist and poet. Cleage is documenting her residency with frequent writings in the HowlRound journal.

Not only is Cleage a member of the relatively small group of African American female playwrights, but it is made even smaller by her age and notable contributions to major theaters. Cleage is an activist for AIDS and women's rights, experiences from which she draws for her writings.

Personal life In 1969, Cleage married Michael Lomax, an Atlanta politician and past president of Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

In 2014, Cleage published a compilation of her personal journal entries titled, Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons, and Love Affairs. As noted in an article by Frida Scott Giles, Cleage self-identifies as "a third[-]generation black nationalist and a radical feminist". Through this theme and way of life, Cleage imparts a message of hope and motivation to Black women in a world where they are victimized from multiple angles. Within the interview, Cleage talks about her family expressing the idea that as a writer, she must write about the struggle of black people. At the book store, artists from the Black Arts Movement would meet. Cleage was inspired by the constant conversations about blackness, and was comfortable in her place within the topic.

Novels The Brass Bed and Other Stories (1991; ) What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day (1997; ) I Wish I Had a Red Dress (2001; ) Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do (2003; ) Babylon Sisters: A Novel (2005; ) Baby Brother's Blues (2006; ) Seen It All and Done the Rest (2008; ) Till You Hear From Me (2010; ) Just Wanna Testify (2011; )

Plays Puppetplay (1981) Hospice (1983) Good News (1984) Essentials (1985) Porch Songs (1985) Come Get These Memories (1987) Chain (1992) Late Bus to Mecca (1992) Flyin' West (1992; ) Blues for an Alabama Sky (1995; ) Bourbon at the Border (1997; ) We Speak Your Names: A Celebration, with Zaron W. Burnett (2006; ) A Song for Coretta, (2008; ) What I Learned in Paris The Nacirema Society (2013; ) Tell Me My Dream (2015) Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous (2019)

Essays Mad at Miles: A Black Woman's Guide to Truth (1990; ) Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot (1993; ) Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons and Love Affairs (2014; )

Poetry

Dear Dark Faces: Portraits of a People (1980) One for the Brothers (1983) We Speak Your Names: A Celebration (2005)

Themes and motivations Cleage focuses on issues surrounding race and gender across all of her works, particularly how these challenges overlap in the lives of Black women. Cleage has stated that black women in America are her main audience, but she welcomes all audiences to her work. and later won the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award. and with a lifetime achievement award in 2020. She received the Sankofa Freedom Award in 2010 and the Theatre Legend Award at the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival in 2013. She was inducted into the Atlanta Business League's Women's Hall of Fame in 2020 and the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2021. The Goodman Theatre hosted a Pearl Cleage Fest from September 14 - October 15, 2023 that included productions of her plays at several Chicago theaters plus readings, workshops, and other events.