August Wilson: The People's Playwright - Interview

According to Wilson, his father, a baker, was a "sporadic presence" within the household. The family lived in a house situated behind the store, back in the alley, with its have a title to backyard. Wilson's mother maintained the home's balanced atmosphere.

"We did family things together," says Wilson. "Like, Monday, at 7 o'clock the rosary came upon the radio, so we said the rosary. upon Tuesday, People Are Funny came upon at 7, and we sat down and listened to that. We played games. They had the Top 40 and we all picked a lay If your song got to be No. 1 you got a nickel. We'd listen and bottom for our song. ... I had a awesome childhood."

He dropp without of high school at age 15 after a history teacher accused him of plagiarizing a 20-page paper upon Napoleon. He spent the day after his exit playing basketball outside the principal's office window, hoping that the administrator would notice, investigate and allow him to plead his case; no single appeared. Wilson ended his formal education, positioned himself in the library, and began a self-directed period of inquiry that lasted four years. by means of the end of this sojourn, he knew that he wanted to be a writer.

"Those were my learning years," he says. "I read everything and anything that I could achieve my hands on, things that interested me: Anthropology was individual cultural anthropology; theology was another. I read volumes on furniture making. I read everything, novels, whatever.

"I have a certain quantity of holes in my education, on the other hand I always say, I know a little bit about everything. There are true few things that I don't know something about, and a certain quantity of things I know more about than others. When I was 20 I said, OK I'm tired of the library. I wanted to make progress out in the world and find life learning--what kinds of things happened when you engaged life--so I did that."