A
scalding, uplifting, sorrowful, and exultant masterpiece of the
modern American theater, The Amen Corner is a play about faith
and family, about the gulf between black men and black women and
black fathers and black sons.
In his first work for the theater, James Baldwin brought all the
fervor and majestic rhetoric of the storefront churches of his
childhood along with an unwavering awareness of the price those
churches exacted from their worshipers.
For years Sister Margaret Alexander has moved her Harlem
congregation with a mixture of personal charisma and ferocious piety.
But when Margaret's estranged husband, a scapegrace jazz musician,
comes home to die, she is in danger of losing both her standing in
the church and the son she has tried to keep on the godly path.
