The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an 1845 memoir by the former slave and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass. The work chronicles Douglass's life, beginning with his fractured family through his freedom. Douglass was bought and sold as a slave numerous times throughout his life, being beaten and humiliated by his owners. Douglass despised slavery and often resisted his mistreatment, helped other slaves to become literate and eventually escaped to the North. The memoir was widely read and became influential in the abolitionist movement.
The one act play American Dream skewers the stereotypical pursuit of the American dream and conventional family life. In the play, Mommy and Daddy live with Grandma. During the play, the trio is visited by Mrs. Barker, from whom they adopted a child years ago. Mommy and Daddy ultimately destroyed the child, as he wasn't up to their standards. The final visitor in the play is a young man, called the American Dream by Grandma, as he is good looking and everything the couple's first child wasn't.
American Beauty, a comedy-drama, is a film about Lester Burnham, a middle-aged man who falls in love with his teenage daughter's best friend Angela, and his family. Lester begins working out to make himself more attractive to Angela, while his wife begins an affair with a co-worker. His daughter Jane begins seeing the neighbor's son Ricky, and soon enough all of their lives head in unexpected directions. This satirical yet touching representation of middle-class life explores themes of imprisonment, sexuality, conformity, and redemption.
The second part of Angels in America, Perestroika, sees Prior, a gay man with AIDS, encountering an angel while his lover, Louis, runs off with a Mormon man, Joe. The angel tells Prior that it's his job to put an end to human progress. The play continues the themes explored in the first part, with characters questioning their identities. It also adds a spiritual element, with the character of the angel, as well as a social commentary that suggests that humankind has a long way to go but can improve.
Part one of the play Angels in America, Millenium Approaches, focuses on the intertwining fates and overlapping storylines of two couples, Prior and Louis and Joe and Harper. Prior has just learned he has AIDs and is now hearing a mysterious voice while Joe, a Mormon, is struggling to accept that he's gay. The play examines identity and what it means to be gay, rich, or Mormon. It also offers a sharp critique of the early days of the AIDs crisis.