Identity and Racial Tensions: Reading in Parks’ Topdog/Underdog

Abstract

This paper delves into Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, scrutinizing how it inspects themes of racial identity plus frictions within the U.S.A. The drama orbits around siblings Lincoln and Booth; two Black males wrestling to sculpt their identities amidst economic hardships and racism’s enduring shadow. By dissecting the duo’s monikers, ancestry, financial standing, and inter-sibling dynamics, this manuscript critiques how internal alongside external elements mold Lincoln and Booth’s conflicted self-perceptions. The prime motif in the play is the brothers’ psychological entanglement with America’s slave-holding past and suppression saga, epitomized by their names tethering them to seminal historical personas. The fringe societal slot obstructs total dominion over how they are publicly perceived and furthers crime-poor cycle’s continuance. Furthermore, persisting race-based philosophies still shape how characters discern themselves; for instance Booth’s unease over his paler skin tone. Through repeated scenarios and conversations repetition in her work, Park mirrors Lincoln along with Booth’s sensation of being ensnared in a cycle of revisiting former traumas. The play is an observation on complex trials facing African-American identity creation within a community chronically negating Black Americans self-sovereignty. Via showcasing her protagonists’ inner plus outer conflicts grappling Parks spurs discussions regarding personal will against sociocultural limitations positioned by history at large scale limits beyond individual control. She sheds light on contradistinctions along tensions lingering above racial narratives inside America articulating identity comprehension as influenced individually albeit shaped significantly by exogenous barriers