Dartmouth Authors

Errol Hill, Willard professor of drama and oratory, ed. The Theater of Black Americans:A Collection of Critical Essays. PrenticeHall, 1980. Vol. I, 221 pp.; vol. 11, 163 pp. Central to this two-part book is the thesis advanced by Addison Gayle Jr., in 1977: the black artist's "refusal to accept white American definitions of reality leads to a refusal to accept its definitions of such concepts as manhood, heroism, beauty, freedom, and humanism." It follows, then, as Hill argues, "that theater as an art form involved in expressing these concepts will likewise be different for the two societies." Therefore, he concludes, "it cannot be a futile hope that America will one day build and support a House of Black Culture, including a National Black Theater, situated in one of the major Black cities." When that hope is realized, it will be the culmination of a long historical process. With its roots deep in ancient African ritual, it has evolved through such cultural manifestations as the development of the Negro Spiritual, the pre-Civil War abolitionist plays of ex-slave William Wells Brown, the formation of the Lafayette Players in 1915, the birth of the noted Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and formation of the Krigwa Little Theater by W. E. B. DuBois in 1926, the Black Theater Project supported by the Federal Theater Project during the years of the Great Depression, and the emergence of today's National Black Theater and Black Revolutionary Theater. All these events, plus a good many more subjects cultural, theatrical, even political and economic are examined in the essays Hill has chosen for this book. They include an essay, "Mom, Dad and God: Values in the Black Theater," by William Cook of the English Department.

Grace Hill, Fitness First. Lebanon, New Hampshire, 1979. 61 pp. "It is only too true," says Hill, "that how we live does determine how long we live. . . . Remember, you are never too old, too fat, or too weary to exercise." Based on those premises, the text of this book tells, as the photographs show, how to "shape up for the day" with morning exercises and "unwind in the evening" with Prebedtime exercises. An unusual feature of this manual is the accompanying cassette tape that describes how each exercise is to be performed and provides appropriate music for each. All you need is a tape deck and the will. Hill teaches Keep Fit with Movement classes at the College.

Mary Kelley, assistant professor of History, ed. Woman's Being, Woman's Place: FemaleIdentity and Vocation in American History. G. K. Hall, 1979. 372 pp. A collection of essays by 20 contemporary historians examining "the lives of white, middle- and upperclass women from colonial times to the present" in order to "isolate significant issues in the history of these American women." The essays are grouped under three major headings which reflect the issues thus isolated: the socialization of women, "a complex process in which individuals are exposed to cultural values and behavior patterns are shaped"; women's roles "within the context of wifehood and motherhood" which tended to establish women's "identity and vocation [and] which had a profound impact on their self-perceptions"; and the consequences, both to themselves and to society, when women chose to go beyond the traditional bounds of wifehood and motherhood. A fourth group of essays explores a more nearly professional question: the new methodologies which have had to be devised by present-day women's historians because their research "cannot be adequately pursued solely within the constraints of conventional historiography." In addition to editing the book, Kelley also contributes an essay, "At War with Herself: Harriet Beecher Stowe as Woman in Conflict within the Home."