History Plays As/Or Counterhistory Plays: A Study of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Major Plays

Abstract

Innovative and unconventional, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks is passionate to rewrite the de-emphasized or dismissed history of African Americans in recorded history. Owing to this fact, a number of her plays are referred to as ‘the history plays.’ This essay attempts to approach a number of plays by Parks from the perspective of Michel Foucault’s implications of ‘history’ and ‘counterhistory’ to determine whether Parks’s plays are history or counterhistory plays. To this end, the essay first cites Foucault’s definitions of history and counterhistory and then examines a number of literary devices Parks has employed in her plays to answer the question.

Keywords: Suzan-Lori Parks, history plays, counterhistory, Michel Foucault