Childhood
Wilson was born
Frederick August Kittel, Jr. in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the fourth of seven children to German immigrant baker, Frederick August Kittel, Sr. and Daisy Wilson, an African American cleaning woman, from North Carolina. Earlier, Wilson's maternal grandmother walked from North Carolina to Pennsylvania in search of a better life. His mother raised the children alone until he was five in a two-room apartment above a grocery store at 1727 Bedford Avenue. The economically depressed neighborhood in which he was raised was inhabited predominantly by black Americans, and Jewish and Italian immigrants. Wilson's mother was remarried to David Bedford in the 1950s when he was a teen, and the family moved from the Hill to the then predominantly white working class neighborhood, Hazelwood where they encountered racial hostility; bricks were thrown through a window at their new home. They were soon forced out of their house and on to their next home.
Education
Wilson was the only African-American student at the Central Catholic High School in 1959 where he was soon driven away by threats and abuse. He then attended Connelley Vocational High School, but found the curriculum unchallenging. He dropped out of Gladstone High School in the 10th grade in 1960 after his teacher accused him of plagiarizing a 20-page paper he wrote on Napoleon I of France. Wilson hid his decision from his mother because he did not want to disappoint her. At the age of 16, he began working menial jobs and that allowed him to meet a wide variety of people, some of whom he later based his characters on, such as Sam in
The Janitor (1985).
Wilson made such extensive use of the Carnegie Library to educate himself that they later awarded him a degree, the only such one they have bestowed. Wilson, who had learned to read at age four, began reading black writers there at age 12 and spent the remainder of his teen years educating himself by reading Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, and others.
Career
By this time, Wilson knew that he wanted to be a writer, but this created tension with his mother, who wanted him to become a lawyer. She forced him to leave the family home and he enlisted in the United States Army for a three-year stint in 1962, but left after one year and went back to working various odd jobs as a porter, short-order cook, gardener, and dishwasher.
Frederick August Kittel, Jr. changed his name to August Wilson to honor his mother after his father's death in 1965. That same year he discovered the blues as sung by Bessie Smith and bought a typewriter for $10. He also heard Malcolm X's voice for the first time, which would influence him later on life in the line "the kiln in which I was fired" from
The Ground on Which I Stand (1996). Both the Nation of Islam and the Black Power spoke to him for their beliefs of self-sufficiency, self-defense, and self-determination, and he appreciated the origin myths that Elijah Muhammad supported. In 1969, he would marry Brenda Burton, a Muslim, and Wilson converted to Islam in order to sustain the marriage. They had one daughter, Sakina Ansari-Wilson, and would divorce in 1972.
In 1968, Wilson co-founded the Black Horizon Theater in the Hill District of Pittsburgh along with his friend Rob Penny. His first play,
Recycling, was performed for audiences in small theaters and public housing community centers. Among these early efforts was
Jitney which he revised more than two decades later as part of his 10-play cycle on 20th century Pittsburgh.
In 1976 Vernell Lillie, founder of the Kuntu Repertory Theatre at the University of Pittsburgh two years earlier, directed Wilson's
The Homecoming. That same year Wilson saw
Sizwe Banzi is Dead at the Pittsburgh Public Theater, his first professional play. Wilson, Penny, and poet Maisha Baton also started the Kuntu Writers Workshop to bring African-American writers together and to assist them in publication and production. Both organizations are still active.
In 1978 Wilson moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota at the suggestion of his friend director Claude Purdy, who helped him secure a job writing educational scripts for the Science Museum of Minnesota. In 1980 he received a fellowship for The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. He quit the Museum in 1981, but continued writing plays. For three years, he was a part time cook for the Little Brothers of the Poor. Wilson had a long association with the Penumbra Theatre Company of St Paul, which gave the premieres of some Wilson plays.
Fullerton Street which has been unproduced and unpublished, was written in 1980. It follows the Joe Louis/Billy Conn fight in 1940 and the loss of values attendant with the Great Migration to the urban North.
In 1987, Saint Paul, Minnesota's mayor George Latimer named May 27 "August Wilson Day". He was honored because he was the only person to both come from Minnesota and win a Pulitzer Prize.
In 1990 Wilson left St Paul after he got divorced and moved to Seattle. This is where he would develop a relationship with Seattle Repertory Theatre. Seattle Rep would ultimately be the only theater in the country to produce all of the works in his ten-play cycle and his one-man show
How I Learned What I Learned.Wilson received many honorary degrees, including an honorary Doctor of Humanities from the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as a member of the University's Board of Trustees from 1992 until 1995.
Wilson's best known plays are
Fences (1985) (which won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award),
The Piano Lesson (1990) (a Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award),
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and
Joe Turner's Come and Gone.
The Pittsburgh Cycle
Wilson's "Pittsburgh Cycle," also often referred to as his "Century Cycle," consists of ten plays...nine of which are set in Pittsburgh's Hill District, an African-American neighborhood that takes on a mythic literary significance like Thomas Hardy's Wessex, William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, or Irish playwright Brian Friel's Ballybeg. The plays are each set in a different decade and aim to sketch the Black experience in the 20th century.
Although the plays of the cycle are not strictly connected to the degree of a serial story, some characters appear (at various ages) in more than one of the cycle's plays. Children of characters in earlier plays may appear in later plays. The character most frequently mentioned in the cycle is Aunt Ester, a "washer of souls". She is reported to be 285 years old in
Gem of the Ocean, which takes place in her home at 1839 Wylie Avenue, and 322 in
Two Trains Running. She dies in 1985, during the events of
King Hedley II. Much of the action of
Radio Golf revolves around the plan to demolish and redevelop that house, some years after her death. The plays often include an
apparently mentally-impaired oracular character (different in each play)...for example, Hedley [Sr.] in
Seven Guitars, Gabriel in
Fences or Hambone in
Two Trains Running.
- 1900s - Gem of the Ocean (2003)
- 1910s - Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988)
- 1920s - Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) - set in Chicago
- 1930s - The Piano Lesson (1990) - Pulitzer Prize
- 1940s - Seven Guitars (1995)
- 1950s - Fences (1987) - Pulitzer Prize
- 1960s - Two Trains Running (1991)
- 1970s - Jitney (1982)
- 1980s - King Hedley II (1999)
- 1990s - Radio Golf (2005)
Israel Hicks produced the entire 10-play cycle from 1990 to 2009 at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.
Other plays
- Recycle, 1973 (produced in Pittsburgh, PA)
- Black Bart and the Sacred Hills, 1977 (produced St. Paul, 1981)
- Fullerton Street, 1980
- The Homecoming, 1989
- The Coldest Day of the Year, 1989
- How I Learned What I Learned (2002—03, Seattle)
Personal life
Wilson was married three times. His first marriage was to Brenda Burton from 1969 to 1972. They had one daughter, Sakina Ansari, born 1970. In 1981 he was married to Judy Oliver, a social worker, and divorced in 1990. Wilson's third marriage was in 1994 to costume designer, Constanza Romero, with whom he had his second daughter, Azula Carmen.
Wilson reported that he had been diagnosed with liver cancer in June 2005 and been given three to five months to live. He died on October 2, 2005 at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, and was interred at Greenwood Cemetery, Pittsburgh on October 8, 2005.
