Introduction 1. Confession and Crime, Confession as Crime: Williams' Tituba's Childre n and Miller' s The Crucible 2. Confrontation and Challenge: Baldwin's Blues for Mister Char li e as Response to the Murder of Emmett Till 3. Condemnation as Redress: Herman Melville's Benito Cereno , Richard Wright's Man, God Ain't Like That , and Robert Lowell 's Benito Cereno 4. Celebration of Family as a Means of Difference and Hope: Hansberry' s A Raisin in the Sun and Odets' Awake and Sing! Conclusion: Intentions and Impacts

American dramas consciously rewrite the past as a means of determined criticism and intentional resistance. While modern criticism often sees the act of revision as derivative, Malburne-Wade uses Victor Turner's concept of the social drama and the concept of the liminal to argue for a more complicated view of revision.

Meredith M. Malburne-Wade is Associate Director of National and International Fellowships at Elon University, USA.