That Middle World: Race, Performance, and the Politics of Passing by Julia S. Charles, and: Relative Races: Genealogies of Interracial Kinship in Nineteenth-Century America by Brigitte Fielder (review)

hearing the voices of those about whom we have not always read, such as Doris Derby and Barbara Molette, as well as of those we have lost, including brief but poignant words from playwright/poet Ntozake Shange and lighting designer Shirley Prendergast. The book also provides a window into career fields not typically showcased in compendiums of this nature, such as stage management and design. Interviews with ‘Femi Sarah Heggie about falling into stage management work with the Negro Ensemble Company and Kathy Perkins’s vast experience as a lighting designer offer a rare and an alternative glimpse into the field as a whole. While Forsgren’s interviews privilege the speaker’s voice, they also share the author’s own positionality, not only as an interviewer and witness but also as an interlocutor and participant in the women’s recollections and histories. While it is clear that she impeccably researched each individual she interviewed, the joy of reading Sistuhs at times comes in part from Forsgren’s own questions and comments, which serve not only to direct interviewees toward more insightful and directive answers but also to make the reader feel as if she were sitting in that living room, café, or theater office with them. It is almost as if we can hear their voices, their laughter, as if we were eavesdropping on a shared secret. (In fact, Forsgren offers her own journey in this process in the Appendix, sharing that it was not until she called attention to her particular position as a Black female theater artist did some of the women wish to speak with her at all.) The context Forsgren provides ahead of sections of interviewees is valuable, as are the biographies in the back of the book. A small criticism would be that a reader who is not a scholar of the Black Arts Movement and/or theater history will appreciate some of the details, but not understand the whole story as told. Narratives weave in and out at times and even with Forsgren’s informative perspective, the interviews can feel disjointed in the order in which she’s chosen to share them. Forsgren notes forthrightly that this collection should not serve as a “definitive” history of women’s involvement in the Black Arts Movement (11), but Sistuhs in the Struggle provides a critical and necessary compendium of the marginalized and silenced voices of Black female theater artists. As playwright P. J. Gibson shares, “It is incumbent upon me to leave an arsenal of information that gives a glimpse into the black presence in America during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. That’s my job” (321).