Throughout a playwriting career that has spanned nearly thirty years, Leslie Lee has explored the history and implications of race in the United States. His plays illustrate the often overlooked history of African Americans, racially turbulent periods in American history, tensions both within and beyond black communities, and the complexity of racial identity.

Leslie E. Lee, who has refused to divulge his birth date to interviewers, was born in November 1935 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, one of nine children. His father ran a small plastering business. As a child Lee was often bedridden, suffering from the bone disease osteomyelitis. His condition kept him from participating in physical games with his six sisters and two brothers, and in a 1998 interview with Judith Newmark he recalls spending his time talking with his mother, reading, and writing plays for his siblings. Though active in literary pursuits at an early age, Lee went...