First Acts: A Black Playwright Comes of Age

By Kermit Frazier

Playwright and television writer Kermit Frazier began life as a precocious Negro boy growing up in southeast Washington, D.C., during the Civil Rights era of the 1950s and 1960s. As a student at an all-Black elementary school, Kermit was selected for a newly formed honors track at a predominantly white secondary school. Traveling a complex path, Kermit tore down segregation barriers, balanced on an academic pedestal, and battled an internal war of denial against his same-sex attractions.

This memoir is not a story about a young man rising from "the hood" but rather a young Black man struggling with stereotypes, identity, and mild dyslexia while straddling two middle-class worlds, Black and white, and striving not to be everyone's "other."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1476688427
• ISBN13: 9781476688428
• Release Date: May 2022
• Publisher: McFarland & Company
• Length: 183 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.9" x 8.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up