Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (Masterplots II: African American Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: August Wilson
- First Published: 1988
- Type of Work: Play
- Type of Plot: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: 1911
- Setting: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Principal Characters: Seth Holly, Bertha Holly, Bynum Walker, Rutherford Selig, Herald Loomis
- Genres: Social realism, Drama
- Subjects: African Americans, Values, Family or family life, Husbands, Self-discovery, United States or Americans, Wives, Magic or magicians, 1910’s, Hotels, motels, or inns, Separation, Songs or songwriters
- Locales: Pittsburgh, PA
The Play
Many of the characters in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone are searching for something. This motif thus provides an important organizing principle for a play that does not aspire to tightness of structure. The story the play tells finds its center, however, in Herald Loomis’ search for Martha, the wife he has not seen in ten years. This search brings Loomis, with his eleven-year-old daughter Zonia, in the fall of 1911 to the boardinghouse in Pittsburgh owned by Seth Holly and his wife Bertha.
Bynum Walker, one of the two boarders in residence, tells Loomis...
[The entire page is 2983 words long]
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