I saw August Wilson’s How I Learned What I Learned at the Huntington Theater. The show is a one-man show featuring Eugene Lee. It is a memoir in monologue, in which he discusses his encounters with racism, his first few jobs, his friends, and music. He talks about his neighborhood and how its people inspires his plays about the African-American experience. How I Learned explores his days as a struggling young writer in Pittsburg’s Hill District. It begins when he was just 20 years old and he tells stories about dropping out of school to write poetry, and how he supported himself doing odd jobs. He discusses the black experience at length—he moved beyond generalized ideas about the oppression of black people and focuses on the specifics of his
