SOURCE: "An Unfashionable Tragedy of American Racism: Alice Childress's Wedding Band," MELUS, Vol. 7, No. 4, Winter, 1980, pp. 57-67.

In the following essay, Curb explores Childress's portrayal of women in her dramas, particularly Wedding Band.

Alice Childress, a serious contemporary playwright whose work has received little scholarly recognition, has been working in American theater for four decades. Born a decade before Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress produced her first play, Florence, ten years before Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Childress was, in fact, the first black woman to have a play produced on the professional American stage, and she is still writing successful drama in the 1980s. Not only has she had eight serious plays produced, but she has also published two children's plays, two novels, a nonfiction collection of interviews with black women who work as domestics, and an anthology of scenes from plays by black Americans as exercises...