In the summer of 2011, three months before her eightieth birthday, the playwright Adrienne Kennedy reflected on her life in the unpublished essay “Almost Eighty.” Now, nearly a decade later, with Kennedy’s ninetieth birthday right around the corner, the piece has finally been published in He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box and Other Plays
, which Theatre Communications Group released in November
. The essay appears in full below.
Adrienne Kennedy’s mother, Etta Hawkins (née Haugabook), 1928, while a student at Atlanta University. Photo courtesy of Adrienne Kennedy.
At almost eighty, I wondered if I could find reasons to live.