Martie Evans-Charles

From a Review of In Search of Our Warrior Mothers: Women Dramatists of the Black Arts Movement

In chapter two, “‘We Black Women’: Martie Evans-Charles and the Spirits of Black Womanhood,” Forsgren argues that Evans-Charles and her deep commitment to portraying black women as “emblems of black history and culture” were crucial to the success of the historic New Layette Theatre.

Unlike Teer, whose work was not widely circulated, Evans-Charles was popular with critics and audiences of her time but largely forgotten after the Black Arts Movement.

Forsgren is particularly interested in the subjecthood of black women in Evans-Charles’s dramas including Where We At, Black Cycle, Job Security, Jamimma, Asante, and Friends. Forsgren, in a methodological move that is both an orientation toward historical events and an ethical imperative, relies on Evans-Charles’s own critical writings, unpublished program notes, archival interviews, and interviews with her daughter and peers to rewrite Evans-Charles back into her rightful place in the narrative of the Black Arts Movement.