Beauty's Daughter, Monster, the Gimmick: Three Plays

The sheer exuberance of language that pours forth in Dael Orlandersmith's plays has dazzled critics and audiences alike. In these three pieces, the award-winning writer and performer celebrates the power of words to rescue the young black women she portrays from their constricted worlds.

In the Obie Award-winning play "Beauty's Daughter," Diane yearns to free herself from her soul-deadening surroundings, where people drown their unfulfilled aspirations in drugs and alcohol. In "Monster," Theresa imagines a life in the rock-'n'-roll poetry bohemia of Manhattan's Lower East Side and away from her home in East Harlem, where she is scorned as a misfit. And in "The Gimmick," Alexis escapes her brutal reality among the library bookshelves, where she dreams of becoming a writer in Paris. Charged with fearless wisdom, these three electrifying plays transform rage-filled ghetto experience into a triumph of rhapsodic expression.

Author: Dael Orlandersmith
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 10/17/2000
Pages: 128
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 7.98h x 5.22w x 0.41d
ISBN: 9780375708718

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 11/01/2000 pg. 80

About the Author
Dael Orlandersmith lives in New York City. She won an Obie award in 1995 for "Beauty's Daughter."