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August Wilson (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

Biography

August Wilson was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1945. The son of a white father who was rarely around his family and a black mother who struggled to raise her six children on welfare and her meager income from janitorial jobs, Wilson learned at first hand about the hardships and prejudice facing black people in American society.

When the family moved to a predominantly white neighborhood, bricks were thrown through their windows, and Wilson's schools days at Central Catholic High School were clouded by the racial epithets he often found scrawled on...

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