Criticism of Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleage

Criticism of Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleage

              Orignially deemed the New Negro Movement , The Harlem Renaissance  In the mid-19th century was created . It was a literary and intellectual flowering that started a new black cultural identity. With racism still widespread and economic world crashing down, creative expression was one of the few avenues available to African Americans in the early twentieth century. Chiefly literary—the birth of jazz is generally considered a separate movement—the Harlem Renaissance, according to Locke, transformed "social disillusionment to race pride.  Blues for an Alabama Sky, is a play written by Pearl Cleage that depicts and exemplifies the real struggles of life during that time period for African Americans.

In this play, Cleage really showed how it was for struggling African Americans. That if you really strive to have something great to continue to push until you produced it. “Let the good times roll” (Sam, Blues for an Alabama Sky). The message in this play is to chase your dreams no matter what. Angel, the main character, had to chase her dreams despite of the fact that she lost her job and found out her boyfriend was cheating with someone else.

The characters are as followed “Angel Allen, a thirty-four-year-old black woman who looks a lot younger, Who is a singer at a local club. Guy Jacobs a black man in his thirtys; costume designer at the Club who is a homosexual. Delia Patterson, a twenty-five-year-old black woman and social worker on staff at the Margaret Sanger family planning clinic. Sam Thomas, a forty-year-old doctor at Harlem Hospital. Leland Cunningham, a twenty-eight-year-old black man from Alabama and a six-week resident of Harlem”(AllianceTheatre.org).

Angel, who has no other source of income, starts to date Leland, who then claims he wants to marry her. Delia, with the help of Sam, is successful in convincing a local church to support her proposal for a family planning clinic. Guy finally receives the long-awaited notice from Josephine Baker inviting him to Paris to work for her. Angel, however, has gotten pregnant by Leland and obtains an illegal abortion performed by Sam. Furious about the abortion, Leland shoots and kills Sam. (Enotes)

The absence of family is a statement in itself. The four of those characters have a family-like support system and structure within each other. The entire play shows their dependence on each other. Guy, for example, takes care of Angel. She even calls him “Big Daddy” several times. This shows family values & willpower equality.

        Blues for an Alabama Sky was a perfect title for this play.  Pearl Cleage created this name because she always “wondered what it would be like for someone who was used to seeing thousands of stars in rural Alabama to unexpectedly move to a place like New York City, where there are so many tall buildings that seeing the sky at all is a kind of privilege” (AmericanTheatre.org)      In addition, ‘The blues’ is a musical genre that started in the deep south, where Angel was from. “The blues” are in the title, and we occasionally hear them, but the music seems as though it should be more deeply and regularly infused into the action” (artsatl.com).