ABSTRACT
Although many of Kennedy's plays deserve examination in this light, this chapter focuses on her first produced play, the Obieaward winning Funnyhouse of a Negro, which is still widely considered to be her best play, even though the original production was financially unsuccessful and drew some sharp criticism. Sarah's version of that play is shaped and selected by her personal ideology which itself has been shaped by the historically precarious position of a mulatto poised between two cultures white and black. As Kennedy tells the story of her life and of the lives of her mother and father, we are led to consider what it means to write a history and what it means to be written into history. Yet, the further we explore these images, the more clearly we see them already ordered according to the sexual fantasies and racial stereotypes by which power relationships between blacks and whites have historically been maintained since the advent of colonialism.
