Surviving the after-shocks of Racism: Reading Adrienne Kennedy and Suzan-Lori Parks after Katrina

The author examines works by African-American female playwrights Adrienne Kennedy and Suzan-Lori Parks, arguing that psychoanalytic theories of identity formation in relation to the processes of mourning and melancholy can illuminate the relationship that the playwrights establish between the characters' and audience members' experience of racism, just as the their own sense of racial identity helps make sense of their stylistic choices. She builds upon Anne Anlin Cheng's theory of racial melancholy and Jean Laplanche's notion of the "enigmatic suffers," considers reaction to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and examines Kennedy's short story "Because of the King of France," her play "Funnyhouse of a Negro," and Parks's "Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom."