In an interview with Roberta S. Maguire conducted the year before she died and published the year after, Alice Childress commented on why throughout her career as a playwright, one that spanned more than four decades, she remained dedicated to realism in the theater. She explained that realism was not an outdated mode, but rather one prohibited from thriving because of an overly cautious marketplace. "We don't allow realism to gallop ahead," she said. "It's always 'This isn't quite the right time for that approach' or 'We want to accomplish just a little bit.'" But since realism was to her mind the best means for capturing human conflict--the wellspring of drama--Childress refused to bow to marketplace demands. She persisted in constructing realistic scripts to portray the truth of what she saw, heard, and felt as an African American woman living in the second half of the twentieth...