Engage Further
Blues for an Alabama Sky Reading & Media List
Librarians at Seattle Public Library created this list of books, music, and films to enhance your experience of Pearl Cleage's Blues for an Alabama Sky, playing at Seattle Rep January 30 - February 23, 2025.
Blues for An Alabama Sky
Cleage, Pearl
Book - 1999
The script of Blues for an Alabama Sky, for your reading pleasure.
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Baldwin, James
Book - 1981
Baldwin's semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of John, a fourteen-year-old boy whose stepfather is a Pentecostal minister in Harlem in 1935, and his struggles to discover his own identity.
A Raisin in the Sun
Hansberry, Lorraine, 1930-1965
Book - 1988
Hansberry's play explores the complex dynamics of a working-class Black American family living in 1950s Chicago as they disagree on how to spend their late relative's insurance money.
When Harlem Was in Vogue
Lewis, David Levering
Book - 1997
This "major study ... thoroughly interweaves the philosophies and fads, the people and movements that combined to give a small segment of Afro America a brief place in the sun." (The New York Times Book Review)
Take My Hand
Perkins-Valdez, Dolen
Book - 2022
Nurse Civil Townsend uncovers the heinous acts being committed against her mostly Black patients at a family planning clinic in 1970s Alabama. This story is inspired by the real-life case of forced sterilization of the Relf sisters.
Bessie
DVD - 2015
Bessie Smith (played by Queen Latifah in this 2015 biopic) was a prominent jazz and blues vocalist known as the "Empress of Blues." She overcame many obstacles to become one of the most celebrated voices to come out of the Harlem Renaissance.
Fearless and Free: A Memoir
Baker, Josephine/ Oluo, Ijeoma (FRW)/ Zafar, Anam (TRN)/ Lewis, Sophie R. (TRN)
Book - 2025
Read about the exceptional life of Josephine Baker to better understand why Guy from Blues for an Alabama Sky dreamed of designing dresses for her in Paris.
There Is Confusion
Fauset, Jessie Redmon
Book - 2020
Written in 1924 and set in the early 20th century, this novel follows the lives of talented dancer Joanna Marshall and her two childhood friends, Peter and Maggie, as they navigate life and changes in their relationships to one another.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse
Johnson, James Weldon
Book- 2008
Johnson was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. This poetry collection draws inspiration from the sermons of old-time African American preachers, a religious movement that had begun to vanish in Johnson's time.
Intimate Apparel; Fabulation, Or, The Re-education of Undine
Nottage, Lynn
Book - 2006
These two companion plays from award-winning playwright Lynn Nottage explore the parallel lives of two Black women in New York City 100 years apart.
The Street
Petry, Ann
Book - 1991
Petry's classic novel "explores the life and dreams of a young woman who struggles to raise her son in a suffocating ghetto world of racism, human degradation, and uncontrolled violence." (NoveList)
The Rough Guide to Blues Divas: Reborn and Remastered
CD - 2019
Listen to the magical sounds of Black women blues vocalists of the 1920s including Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.
Blues for an Alabama Sky runs at Seattle Rep from January 30 - February 23, 2025. Get your tickets today!