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Summary Of Anna Deveare Smith's Play Fires In The Mirror

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According to Elizabeth M. Myers, Anna Deveare Smith's narrative play “Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities,” is an exposition of monologues to retell the stories of the Blacks and the Jews, because from the very start of her introduction of the play, she introduces herself by saying, “My name is Anna Deveare Smith and some people call me an actress and a playwright.” Thereafter, thirty-two seconds into her introduction of self, we are taken back to the past. It is 1991 and we are taken into the streets of a Brooklyn neighborhood that has erupted in flames from racial discord. The movements in this dramatic episode are quick! Suddenly, we are shocked to see a young Black male in a yellow shirt and blue jeans jump …show more content…

The evidence of violence suggests that there was a series of racial discord that preceded this outburst of violent actions. In her article, “Performing Personal Narrative: Anna Deveare Smith's ‘Fires in the Mirror,’” Myers claims that: the tragic events of August 20, 1991, which began when a car from the motorcade of the Hasidic Grand Rebbe jumped the sidewalk and pinned two black children against a window grate, severely injuring seven-year-old, Angela Cato, and killing her cousin Gavin, also seven” (52). This information is helpful for my research because in “Fires in the Mirror,” Deveare-Smith cleverly portrays nineteen original portraits. What I could tell about each of the people Devear-Smith portrayed is the way she describes the biases that exist between Blacks and whites. She lets us know that this is very important, because the word, “bias” is the Rising Action that results in the Climax. This biasness, plays until the very end of the play with Gavin Cato’s father. And what I glean from this, is that through the tale of these bias notions of negative stereotypes between Blacks and Jews, I see that this story begins with a Pre-School teacher, who is anonymous. She is a Lubavitch woman, who employees a young Black male,

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