A Study of Lynn Nottage's Writing of Community in Ruined

Lynn Nottage is a distinguished African American dramatist.She commits to bringing to the American stage extreme passion and global awareness of women's issues, trying to figure out a way to empower African American women.Ruined, which won her Pulitzer Prize for drama, is one of the representatives that attempt to reveal sufferings and mistreatment of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo.This paper will engage Ferdinand Tönnies' community theory to analyze the collapse and reconstruction of community in Ruined.By analyzing the building of spirit community in Mama Nadi's bar, this paper highlights the aspiration of Congolese women to get rid of the state of fear imposed by men through rape and their quest for community.At the same time, it exposes the author's purpose of writing, that is, to voice for the silenced and the forgotten.