Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

By August Wilson,

Book cover of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom: A Play

Book description

NOW A NETFLIX FILM STARRING VIOLA DAVIS AND CHADWICK BOSEMAN

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences and The Piano Lesson comes the extraordinary Ma Rainey's Black Bottom—winner of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play.

The time is 1927. The place is a run-down recording studio…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Ma Rainey's Black Bottom as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I remember reading Wilson’s play for the first time as a grad student, not long after I’d been a street musician in Harlem working with a brilliant, irascible old bluesman from Mississippi, and thinking “I know these guys.”

Wilson, the greatest American blues playwright (and one of the greatest American dramatists period), has an uncanny ear for the jibing, jiving, wisdom-declaiming back-and-forth that fills the conversational space between four southern-born musicians who find themselves in a Chicago recording studio one day in 1927, getting ready to back up their boss, Ma Rainey.

Toledo, elder and griot, the keeper of ancestral…

Want books like Ma Rainey's Black Bottom?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

Browse books like Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Book cover of Their Eyes Were Watching God
Book cover of The World Don't Owe Me Nothing: The Life and Times of Delta Bluesman Honeyboy Edwards
Book cover of Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,187

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in drama, African Americans, and racism?

Drama 82 books
African Americans 808 books
Racism 207 books