Notes from the Field

From the Tony- and Pulitzer-nominated playwright, actress, and activist: shining a light on the school-to-prison pipeline, this urgent new work of drama brings together seventeen voices from the African American community--students and teachers, counselors and congressmen, preachers and prisoners. Now a full-length HBO feature. An Anchor Original. Notes from the Field--originally performed as a one-person play--portrays a host of real-life figures who have witnessed, experienced, and fought the system that pushes students of color out of the classroom and into prisons. (As Smith put it in a recent interview: "Stuff that for middle-class kids or rich kids, it'd be considered mischief; for poor kids, it's really that road to prison.") We are introduced to these figures one by one: Sherrilyn Iffil, president of the NAACP; Rev. Jamal Harrison Bryant, who spoke at the funeral of Freddie Gray; Niya Kenny, a high school student who was arrested for defending a classmate against a teacher's overzealous discipline; Bree Newsome, the activist who made headlines when she removed the Confederate flag from the state house grounds of South Carolina; and many others. Taken together, these voices bear powerful witness to a great injustice of our time--and inspire us with their accounts of perseverance, resistance, and progress.

• | Author: Anna Deavere Smith
• | Publisher: Anchor
• | Publication Date: May 21, 2019
• | Number of Pages: 192 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 0525564594
• | ISBN-13: 9780525564591