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Gem of the Ocean is the play that begins it all. Set in 1904 Pittsburgh, it is chronologically the first work in August Wilson’s decade-by-decade cycle dramatizing the African American experience during the 20th century—an unprecedented series that includes the Pulitzer Prize–winning plays Fences and The Piano Lesson. Aunt Esther, the drama’s 287-year-old fiery matriarch, welcomes into her Hill District home Solly Two Kings, who was born into slavery and scouted for the Union Army, and Citizen Barlow, a young man from Alabama searching for a new life.
The play is part of August Wilson's Century Cycle, his epic dramatization of the African American experience in the twentieth century.
This edition includes a foreword by Phylicia Rashad.
A swelling battle hymn of transporting beauty. Theatergoers who have followed August Wilson’s career will find in Gem a touchstone for everything else he has written.
—Ben Brantley, The New York Times
Wilson’s juiciest material. The play holds the stage and its characters hammer home, strongly, the notion of newfound freedom.
—Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune