Zooman and the sign
Charles Fuller (Author)
"Zooman and the Sign is a play of extraordinary power, depth and emotional complexity, about the impact of one single act of random violence on a family and on an entire community. Zooman is a black teenager so full of contempt and rage he can hardly stop jittering. He struts and flashes his gun and "Ole Magic" -- his 10-inch switchblade -- and boasts of the terror he inflicts. "I just killed someone," he tells us. "Little girl, I think." The little girl is Jinny Tate, the youngest child of a working-class family in a black Philadelphia neighborhood. For the Tates, the murder is shattering, made doubly painful by its senselessness. Reuben, Jinny's father, rightly believes that many of his neighbors witnessed the shooting but remain silent out of fear. In a desperate, angry attempt to "make somebody come forward," he hangs a sign on his porch, and forces on his community a question it would go to any length not to have to answer. Zooman and the Sign is a play of unusual insight and originality, full of the harshness of the street. Its subject -- senseless violence and its consequences -- reaches far beyond the Philadelphia neighborhood where the play is set. Fuller's response to this violence -- to the rage, the isolation, and the cycle of fear it creates -- is both realistic and humane. Zooman is both tough and compassionate, "a powerful, tragic vision" in which "there are no real villains, only victims." (Frank Rich, The New York Times)" -- Jacket flap
Print Book, English, 1982
Book club edition
Nelson Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1982