Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history.

In 1969 he married Brenda Burton a Muslim and Wilson converted to Islam in order to sustain the marriage. At 20 he decided he was a poet and submitted his poetry to such magazines as Harpers. In 1980 he received a fellowship for The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis.

August Wilson (April 27 1945 – October 2 2005) was an American playwright whose work included a series of ten plays The Pittsburgh Cycle for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama.