The Amen Corner

A Play

By: James Baldwin

Narrated by: Myra Lucretia Taylor, Dion Graham, January LaVoy, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Janina Edwards, Aaron Goodson, Angel Pean, Shayna Small, Robin Miles, Dominic Hoffman, JD Jackson, Adenrele Ojo

From one of the most brilliant writers of the twentieth century—a masterpiece of the modern American theater: a play about faith and family, about the gulf between black men and black women and black fathers and black sons.

"[Baldwin] uses words as the sea uses waves." —Langston Hughes

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.

Critic reviews

"He is thought-provoking, tantalizing, irritating, abusing and amusing. And he uses words as the sea uses waves." —Langston Hughes

"What style! What intensity! What religious feeling!.... The man has mastered his rage and bitterness. He's a marvel!" —John Cheever

A Classic

One of my favorite plays, but my God the singing was horrible. LOL. I often wonder if Baldwin's memory of the lyrics from childhood was off because many of them don't fit any gospel structure. Otherwise. I really enjoy the central tension between the blues (truth) and church/God (Delusion/ Denial/Religious escapism). He critiques how our unwillingness to face pain leads us down paths that deprive us of love. Facing pain is itself an act of love. Mostly though, I really just want to remarkably awful awful that singing is. lol 😂