- boarding housenounChapter 1 →
A private home where paying guests rent rooms and receive meals; the landlord and tenants share common spaces like the kitchen and dining room.
- conjure mannounChapter 1 →
A person in African American folk tradition who uses spiritual rituals, roots, and charms to heal, bind, or influence people and events.
- chain gangnounChapter 1 →
A group of prisoners chained together and forced to do hard outdoor labor, such as building roads, as punishment — here used illegally to exploit Black workers in the post-Reconstruction South.
- bindverbChapter 1 →
In this play's spiritual sense, to connect or tie a person to another person or to a place through a mystical, unseen force — not a physical tying.
“Binding people to each other. Sometimes I bind them to a place. That's what I do. I bind them.”
- the Southern cross the Yellow DogphraseChapter 1 →
A famous crossroads in Mississippi where two railroad lines intersect, considered a place of spiritual power in African American blues and folk tradition.
“I done been to where the Southern cross the Yellow Dog and it didn't tell me nothing.”
- drifternounChapter 1 →
A person with no fixed home or steady job who moves from place to place, taking work or company wherever they find it.
- JubanounChapter 1 →
A traditional African American communal dance involving rhythmic clapping, stomping, and call-and-response, rooted in enslaved communities' cultural practices.
- Middle PassagenounChapter 1 →
The forced sea voyage that transported enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas; here it appears as a haunting vision of bones rising from the water.
- free-bornadjectiveChapter 1 →
Born into freedom rather than into slavery; used here to distinguish Seth, who was never enslaved, from the Southern migrants around him who carry that history.
- shiningadjectiveChapter 2 →
In this play's spiritual language, radiating an inner light that signals a person has found their true self and broken free from whatever was oppressing their soul.
“Herald Loomis, you shining! You shining like new money!”
- bleed forphraseChapter 2 →
To suffer or sacrifice on behalf of someone else; in this context, to act as a spiritual redeemer who takes on another person's pain or debt.
“I don't need nobody to bleed for me! I can bleed for myself.”
- songnounChapter 1 →
In Bynum's spiritual framework, a person's unique inner identity and life purpose — the essential self that must be found and claimed to live fully.
- hauntedadjectiveChapter 1 →
Persistently troubled by painful memories or visions from the past that a person cannot escape, as if a ghost were following them.
- devoutadjectiveChapter 2 →
Deeply and sincerely committed to a religion, following its practices faithfully and seriously.
- servitudenounChapter 2 →
The condition of being forced to work for someone else without freedom or fair pay, essentially a form of slavery.
Joe Turner's Come and GonePlay by August Wilson