Minhaj University Lahore

Flyin’ West
Pearl Cleage
Presented By.
Presented To.
Iqra Malik Sir Mujeeb
Diasporic Literature
Pearl Cleage (7Dec,1948)
• African American writer, essayist, playwright and novelist.
• Birth place was Springfield, Massachusetts.
• Graduated from Spelman College in Atlanta in 1971 with a
degree in drama
• She has worked on modern issues like racism, sexism and
AIDS
• Her work portrays history of migration of black women to the
west.
• She was the founding editor of literary magazine ‘Catalyst’.
Agyeman and Nationalist Movements
Her father was a well known minister Albert Buford Cleage
(later Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman) and mother was a school teacher
Doris Graham Cleage.
Albert Cleage or Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, Black Nationalist and civil
rights activist, was one of the most prominent black religious leaders in
America. Agyemen preached a form of nationalism within the black
community that stressed economic self-sufficiency and separation that
relied on a religious awakening among black people.
Religion and Politics
• His most recognized work was the Black Messiah (1968).  In Messiah,
Agyeman argued that Jesus was a black revolutionary who sought to lead
a “Black Nation” to freedom. He believed the emergence of nationalist
movements of the world’s coloured majority would reveal the historic
truth that Jesus was the “non-white leader of a non-white people
struggling for national liberation against the rule of a white nation.” 
Agyeman understood the power of the church within the black community
and thought the re-orientation from a “white” Jesus to a “black” Jesus
would be a necessary step in the spiritual liberation of black America. 
Some believe the basis of Agyeman’s spiritual teachings was based on the
theology rooted in Robert Young’s Ethiopian Manifesto (1829).
“Father’s Son” & “know what the words can do”
• She, like her mother, wanted to be her father’s son as she
has no brother. They were two sisters only.
• She remained circling around her father all the time not only
on Sundays refereed to church preparations.
• See people hearing and spell caught by her father’s speeches
more than hour.
• Heard from her father about Frantz Fanon ‘Wretched on the
Earth’.
• I know the power of words and know what the words can do.
North America & South America
• The Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-
Nebraska Act, and many others, all failed to steer the country away
from secession and war. In the end, politicians on both sides of the
aisle dug in their heels. Eleven states left the United States in the
following order and formed the Confederate States of America:
• South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee
Civil War 12 April 1861- 9 April 1865
• The American Civil War was fought between the United States of
America (North) and the Confederate States of America, a collection
of eleven southern states that left the Union in 1860 and 1861. The
conflict began on disagreement over the institution of slavery.
• SOUTH: On February 1861,  Jefferson Davis, a former U.S. Senator
and Secretary of War, was elected President of the Confederate States
of America by the members of the Confederate constitutional
convention. 
Historical Background
• This play is written in 1994.
• People of Nicodemus are determined to create a strong community.
• Nicodemus is a community residing in Kansas,Garaham in United
States named after the Biblical figure Nicodemus.
• It is the only western community established by African Americans
after the civil war during the reconstruction period.
END OF CIVIL WAR
• After four bloody years of conflict, the United States defeated the
Confederate States. In the end, the states that were in rebellion were
readmitted to the United States, and the institution of slavery
was abolished nation-wide.
• North has industrial resources while the economy of south depends
upon agriculture and land managed by the working slaves.
• Abraham Lincoln and the North won the war.
• Slavery has put to an end.
JIM CROW LAWS
• Jim Crow laws established a legal foundation for racial segregation in
the South. The legalized racism of these laws was what many African
Americans fled to the West to escape. 
• They were first enacted in 1865 to provide for racial separation in
public transportation, but the attitudes behind the laws soon led to
separation.
• Laws began by addressing railroads, they soon called for segregation
in schools, hospitals, theatres, hotels, streetcars, residences, and
cemeteries.
Homestead Act, 1862
• Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862,
the Homestead Act encouraged Western migration by providing
settlers 160 acres of public land.
• In exchange, homesteaders paid a small filing fee and were required
to complete five years of continuous residence before receiving
ownership of the land.
• After six months of residency, homesteaders also had the option of
purchasing the land from the government for $1.25 per acre. The
Homestead Act led to the distribution of 80 million acres of public
land by 1900.
Time and Place
• 1994 play, Flyin’ West  is set in 1898, follows four black
women as they lay claim to land in Nicodemus, an all-black
Kansas town.
• The play is a powerful commentary on sisterhood, identity
and race and is based on fact: in the late 19th century, many
African Americans left the South to settle out West.
Setting
• The play takes place in and around the house shared by
Sophie, Fannie, and Miss Leah.
• Activity will take place in the house’s kitchen, dinning,
living room which has a table, chairs, a small desk,
upstairs are other bedrooms, one of which will also be
the scene of action during the play.
• Other activity takes place in the area outside the front
door includes wood gathering, chopping, hanging of
clothes to dry etc.
Acts
• Act 1.
• Scene 1: A Fall Evening
• Scene 2: Two days later, early afternoon
• Scene 3: The same day, evening
• Scene 4: Next Morning
• Scene 5: Late that night
• Act 2.
• Scene 1: Early, the next morning
• Scene 2: The next Sunday, early morning
• Scene 3: Sunday Afternoon
• Scene 4: Sunday Evening
• Scene 5: Monday Morning
• Scene 6: Seven months later, April 1899
Plot
• In the play we are introduced to a family who moved from Memphis,
Tennessee to Nicodemus, Kansas in search of freedom and the right
to own land.
• Fannie is a writer of 32 years excited about creating a black
community in the west, sister of Minnie and consider Sophie as her
sister, they all own their own wheat farm. She is proud of her black
roots and born after slavery.
Climax & Conclusion
• Frank and Minnie live in London, enjoying a wealthy lifestyle because
of the money Frank receives from his father. When his father dies,
however, the family disowns him, leaving him penniless and
desperate. It is this desperation that drives him to the sell Minnie’s
portion of the homestead. His intentions are discovered by the
others, however, and he is killed.
 Characters
• Sophie – like a sister of Fannie and Minnie, born into slavery
• Miss Leah – Sophie’s elderly neighbor, born into slavery
• Fannie – middle sister of Sophie and Minnie, born into slavery
• Wil – neighbor and friend of Sophie, Fannie, and Miss Leah; born into
slavery
• Minnie – youngest sister of Sophie and Fannie
• Frank – son of a white slave-owner father and black slave mothe
 Antagonist (Frank Charles)
•Frank is Minnie's thirty-six-year-old domineering and abusive husband.
•A Mulatto: Mother was a slave owned by his father. Because of his light
skin, he is often mistaken for a white man.
•Frank and Minnie live in London, enjoying a wealthy lifestyle because of
the money Frank receives from his father. When his father dies, however,
the family disowns him, leaving him penniless and desperate. It is this
desperation that drives him to the sell Minnie's portion of the homestead.
His intentions are discovered by the others, however, and he is killed.
•Frank has a superior attitude and looks down on Minnie's family. He
regards himself as sophisticated and elite, and he has no respect for the
difficult life on the western plains. His duplicity is evident in the way he
speaks with false sweetness in the presence of Minnie’s family and then
beats Minnie behind closed doors.
 Minnie Dove Charles

• Minnie turns twenty-one years old during the play and is married to
Frank, who is fifteen years her senior. While Minnie loves her family very
much, she is not strong enough to stand up to her abusive husband. As a
result, she rarely sees her family because she lives in London, where she
is not happy. Minnie left Memphis with Fannie and Sophie so that they
could claim free land in Kansas and make a new life together. When she
attends a conservatory (she has a beautiful voice), she meets Frank.
• During the course of the play, Minnie reveals that she is pregnant, and
when Frank beats her, she is most afraid for her child. When Frank is
killed, Minnie does not cry but merely takes the deed to her land from
his pocket.
 Fannie Dove

• Fannie is thirty-two years old and unmarried. She lives with Sophie
and Miss Leah outside the all-black town of Nicodemus, Kansas. She
and the other women run a wheat farm and have achieved self-
sufficiency.
• Fannie enjoys the outdoors and is especially fond of flowers.
Although she and Wil are very close to each other, it is not until the
end of the play that they make plans to wed. In family matters,
Fannie is a peacemaker. She believes in love and family, and she
encourages Minnie to work out her marital problems with Frank. Still,
she realizes that Frank must be stopped, so she participates in the
plot to kill him.
Miss Leah
• Miss Leah is a seventy-three-year-old woman who spent most of her life in
slavery. She gave birth to ten children while she was a slave, and she lost them
all to the trade.
• After she became free, she and her husband had five more children together,
but they were all lost to illness. When her husband died, she buried him and
headed west in hope of a better life. When her new life is threatened by Frank,
she bakes him a poisoned apple pie and serves it to him without remorse.
• Miss Leah now lives with Sophie and Fannie. She is a feisty woman who
demands respect, speaks her mind, and believes strongly in the oral tradition.
Although Fannie wants to preserve Miss Leah’s stories in writing, Miss Leah
insists that some stories can only be preserved by being told. At the end of the
play, she continues the oral tradition by telling stories to Minnie’s baby girl.
Wil Parish
• Wil is a forty-year-old man who was born into slavery. He is a trusted
and loyal friend of the women, but he has a special relationship with
Fannie. At the end of the play, they are finally engaged.
• Wil is diligent in work and protective in relationships. He offers to
“take care of” Frank when the women discuss the problems he poses.
When the women ask him to be part of their scheme to get Frank
back to the cabin, Wil is more than happy to help. He is respectful of
all of the women, and his character provides a contrast to Frank.
Sophie Washington
• Sophie is a thirty-six-year-old woman who was born into slavery and is now
determined to make the most of her chance at independence. She is strong,
both physically and emotionally, and she performs her responsibilities without
complaining. She is also a visionary with a plan for what Nicodemus can
become in the future. She envisions an all-black town complete with schools,
churches, and libraries.
• Sophie is not actually a sister of Fannie and Minnie, although the relationship
among the three women has developed as if they were all related. Sophie
originally joined the family when, in Memphis, she was doing laundry to
support herself. She did laundry for Fannie and Minnie, and she eventually
became like a sister to them. Sophie is supportive and protective of her
friends and family, and she has no tolerance for condescension.
 Paul Lawrence Dunbar
• Fannie’s favorite African American poet and quoted by her in the
play, was a nationally prominent in the 1890s.
• Frank gives Fannie a poetry book, why the cage bird sings, often
referred to as the ‘poet laureate’ of the African American race.
• His poetry reflects the emotional spectrum and unique experiences
of late 19th century African American. Frank and Minnie refers to his
poetry in Flyin’ West.
Diasporic Elements
• At the heart of the play is the theme of freedom, specifically newly won freedom.
Most of the characters in the play were born into slavery and remember that way
of life. Although the idea of heading west on the promise of land was scary, they
understood that doing so was their best chance to enjoy a better life and
establish new homes and communities for future generations. The
sisters connect their freedom with the distant past of their ancestors in the ritual
they performed when they left the South, a ritual they continue to perform in the
West. They hold hands and say:
“Because we are free Negro women, born of free Negro women, back as
far as time began, we choose this day to leave a place where our lives, our honor,
and our very souls are not our own. We choose this day to declare our lives to be
our own and no one else’s. And we promise to always remember the day”
Themes
The backgrounds, actions, and feelings of the play's four women and two men
reflect the following themes.
• Determination
• Racism
• Miscegenation (intermarriage between races)
• Feminism
• Pride: One major theme in the novel is ethnic pride, as illustrated in the characters
of the women who bravely move west as independent women, and yet, continue
to embrace and honor their black heritage
• Freedom: One major theme in the play is freedom. This theme is illustrated
through the freedom from slavery, the women's freedom to act independently of
men, and the women's freedom to follow opportunity and make a new life for
themselves
Symbols
• Cleage introduces symbolism by using well-chosen objects to convey meaning.
She introduces flower symbolism first. Flowers are beautiful products of nature,
and they represent new life and strength. They also represent a lifestyle above
simple survival; having fresh flowers in the house is a cheerful indulgence.
• Fannie brings flowers from outside and places them in water throughout the
house, an act that demonstrates her natural tendency to bring the life and
vitality of nature indoors. Different flowers express different ideas. For
example, Sophie considers sunflowers too large to be displayed inside. This
expresses the idea that not everything about the external world is appropriate
or comfortable in the women's domestic setting. Roses symbolize
independence. Fannie tells the story of her father telling her mother that
"colored women ain't got no time to be foolin' with roses," to which her mother
responded that if he had time to worry..
Fannie’s China(Nostalgia)
• Another example of symbolism is Fannie’s China, which
represents a better way of life than the slave existence
endured by the other characters. The china also represents
the importance of the past to Fannie. Sophie wanted to
leave it behind when they packed up to head out West, but
Fannie refused to leave without it because it was her
mother’s China. The China is significant to Fannie, just as
Miss Leah’s stories are significant to her, and Fannie wants to
preserve both to preserve the past.
Ida B. Wells
• Ida B. Wells, a bold African-American woman journalist, had taken a
crusade against. Lynching ranged from mobs of ten to sometimes
hundreds of white men exacting ‘mob-justice’ against a citizen –
usually African-American – when a local courtroom's verdict
disagreed with their racist ‘gut instincts’.
• In 1892, she calls for her readers to leave the southern city Memphis
in response to a lynching and riot. As a result, more than 7000 of the
city’s black residents left to settle on the western frontier, part of a
mass migration of African American to the West during the late 19th
century.
Critical appreciation
• Critical reception of Flyin' West has been overwhelmingly positive.
Critics commend Cleage for portraying a forgotten chapter in history
and for doing so in a way that empowers women. Jane T. Peterson
and Suzanne Bennett in Women Playwrights of Diversity: A Bio-
Bibliographical Source-book wrote that this play "provides a new and
unique perspective on the traditional telling of how the West was
won." Similarly, Cathy Madison of American Theatre wrote, "Frank's
fate is ultimately decided by the women themselves. Unwilling as
they are to relinquish their land and freedom, they manage to offer a
searing new testament to how the West was won."
irony
• Irony refers to a difference between what appears to be true and what is actually true. That
Cleage uses Frank, a mulatto, as a tool of irony, is therefore appropriate. Despite his cool
demeanor, he is deeply conflicted about his mixed parentage.
• The marriage is characterized by an imbalance of power, and he does not recognize that he
is recreating the truth of the past. To make the parallel especially clear to the reader, Frank is
very light-skinned (like his father), and Minnie is dark (like his mother); he reveals to her that
he led some white men to believe that Minnie was his “black whore,” not his wife.
• His blindness toward his own hypocrisy is equally apparent in his desire to return to London,
where blacks are treated better; he fails to realize that he is guilty of mistreating his own
people, both individually and collectively.
• Frank’s character is also ironic in the way he tries to impress Minnie’s family. He believes that
he can demonstrate his superiority to them by pointing out how civilized his way of life is
compared to their rustic lifestyle. Because he believes that European civilization is superior
in every way to that of the American West, he assumes that everyone else will agree.
Traits & Values
• Optimistic
• Placid
• Persistent
• Brave
• Family
• Beauty
• Memories
Fannie & Will Vs. Frank & Minnie
• Loving Vs. Domestic Voilence
• Respectful Vs. Disrespectful
• Caring Vs. Unhealthy and Abusive
Textual References
“...some things gotta be said out loud to keep the life in ‘em.”Miss Leah
“I don’t outright pass. I let people draw their own conclusions.” Frank’s line
about passing is a major theme of the time period. ‘Passing’ refers to a lightness
of skin tone that allowed many African-Americans to ‘pass’ as white. Beyond
passing as white, lighter skin tone often carried social standing within groups of
African-Americans, and one of Frank’s lines (“You ever see a group of colored
people who didn’t put the lightest one in charge”) emphasizes this point made
as he directs it towards Sophie.
“Min tells me you’re a mulatto... Oh, excuse me! I didn’t mean to be so
personal.” The term carries a lot of weight in this context, illustrating the struggle
between Frank, who is more concerned with his white heritage, and Sophie,
who is concerned more with her black heritage. As is the case with both
characters in the play, their fathers were white slave-owners who more or less
forced their slave mothers to bare children of mixed racial identities.
Textual References
“Every other wagon pull in here nowadays got a bunch of colored women on it call
themselves homesteadin’ and can’t even make a decent cup of coffee, much less bring a
crop in!” Homesteading, referenced in Miss Leah’s line, was the act of cultivating land under
the Homestead Act which enabled land in western states to be purchased for a considerably
low price, in the hopes that it would encourage western expansion in the United States.
“They had just had a lynching the week before we got there. Just my luck! "Frank's line
about a lynching in New Orleans illustrates the fear Ida B. Wells, a bold African-American
woman journalist, had taken a crusade against. Lynching ranged from mobs of ten to
sometimes hundreds of white men exacting ‘mob-justice’ against a citizen – usually African-
American – when a local courtroom's verdict disagreed with their racist ‘gut instincts’.
“I’ll get Wil Parrish to teach me Spanish and move us all to Mexico!” Many escaped slaves
used to flee to Mexico, where most often times they were greeted with open arms, if not
indifference towards their race. Slaves often escaped and lived peacefully with non-white
neighbors, as Wil Parrish’s character alludes to having lived with Seminole Indians and
Mexicans.
Past Vs. Present
• Today, Nicodemus is the only remaining western town settled by
African Americans. At its peak the town boasted a population of close
to 800. At present there are 27 permanent residents, but yearly
celebrations bring former residents back to unite with family and
remember their town’s all too unique heritage and the resolve it took
for their founding fathers and mothers to piece together a vision of
paradise.