Appropriate
Seattle Rep presents "Appropriate" by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins from April 9 to May 10, 2026. Librarians at Seattle Public Library created this list of books, films and television shows to enhance your experience of the show.
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Appropriate
The script of "Appropriate," for your reading pleasure.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Race Stories
This compelling essay collection "examines the transformational role photography plays in shaping ideas and attitudes about race and how photographic images have been instrumental in both perpetuating and combating racial stereotypes." (publisher's copy)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Kindred
Dana, a 20th-century Black woman, is mysteriously transported in time back to the antebellum South, where she confronts firsthand the harsh reality of slavery and the complicated nature of her family history.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Turner House
Like "Appropriate," this novel deals with a multigenerational family called home to decide how to settle their parents' estate. Unlike the Lafayettes, however, the Turners are a Black family whose modest family home is now nearly worthless.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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My Monticello
"Johnson wrestles with questions of racial identity, post-racial society, and the legacies of slavery in her masterly debut collection." (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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American Bloodlines
In this memoir/cultural critique, Lea investigates her family's personal ties to the hanging of Rainey Bethea, a young Black man who was the last person to be publicly executed in the United States.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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August: Osage County
Jacob-Jenkins has acknowledged that Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which also features an acrimonious family homecoming, was an inspiration for the kind of story he wanted to tell in "Appropriate."
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning
If only patriarch Brandon Lafayette had followed the guidelines presented in this short and simple book, perhaps the Lafayette family wouldn't have wound up in this mess in the first place!
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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Watermelons, Nooses, and Straight Razors
The racist objects in the Jim Crow Museum tell a powerful story about the ways in which white supremacist culture deployed racist caricatures and stereotypes to demean and disenfranchise Black people for centuries.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Succession
Looking for more darkly satirical takes on wealthy family dysfunction and legacy battles? The Roy family might be even more over the top than the Lafayettes!
Format: DVD
Availability: Available