Throughout time, in every culture, human beings have erected fences, real or imagined. Fences are the stumbling blocks we face in life. Some of them we tear down. Some of them we climb over. Yet some of them prove impenetrable, or so we think. This is true of people of every race, every social level, and every educational level.
             August Wilson was born Frederick August Kittel on April 27, 1945, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This is the same city where fences take place. He was the forth of six children born to Fredrick and Daisy Kittel. In the 1970s, August adopted his mother's maiden name, Wilson, and dropped his paternal surname.
             Wilson has written a celebrated series of plays about the black experience in the 20th-century United States, of which nine plays of the proposed ten-play cycle had been produced by 2003. Although they do not follow a chronological progression (the 2003 play, Gem of the Ocean, is set in 1904 and is chronologically the first in the series), each takes place in a specific decade. Wilson made his theatrical breakthrough with the play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984), which takes place in the 1920s. A series of remarkable works followed: Fences (1987; Pulitzer Prize and Tony award), Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988), The Piano Lesson (1990; Pulitzer Prize; TV movie, 1995), Two Trains Running (1992), Seven Guitars (1995), King Hedley II (2000), and Gem of the Ocean. Along with the earlier Jitney (1982), these plays examine the question of black identity from the turn of the 20th century and constitute perhaps the most important existing body of African American drama. (Grolier 1)
             His own life reflects his views that are seen in his work. It is obvious that his respect of women in the story comes from his own mother and grandmother.
             His maternal grandmother exhibited great strength and determination when she walked from North Carolina to Pennsylvania in search of a better life. Wilson's mother, Daisy, i...