Crumbs From the Table of Joy

Crumbs From the Table of Joy, which premiered in 1995 at Second Stage Theater in New York, is the first major full-length play written by Lynn Nottage, who is now one of the most widely acclaimed playwrights in contemporary American theater. Nottage’s works primarily explore constructions of Blackness and the intersection of BIPOC identities with gender roles, class differences, and citizenship within both historical and contemporary settings. Crumbs is about a Black American family in 1950, set as the country is recovering from World War II and the Civil Rights movement is gaining momentum. As in most of Nottage’s works, the play focuses on strong women characters who are negotiating their places in a racist and misogynistic world that seems perpetually on the cusp of change, juxtaposing the way these issues play out within the public world and the private domestic sphere. A memory play, it is filtered through the perception and reminiscences of 17-year-old Ernestine Crump. The play’s title comes from “Luck,” a brief poem by Langston Hughes that suggests that love and happiness are not gifted equally in life, and some only receive crumbs of joy until they reach heaven.

Crumbs won two NAACP Awards for Performance, and Nottage went on to win some of the most prestigious awards in the field, including multiple Outer Critics Circle Awards, Lucille Lortel Awards, and Obie Awards. She also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 and a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship in 2007. Nottage’s Ruined was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and in 2017, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice, rewarded for her play Sweat.

This guide uses the acting edition of Crumbs from the Table of Joy published by Dramatists Play Service in 1998.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of racism, racial violence, blood, racial slurs, alcohol use and addiction, drug use and addiction, death, and mentions of antisemitism and Nazis.

Plot Summary

The play is narrated by Ernestine Crump, a young Black woman who is remembering 1950, the year she was 17. After her mother dies, her grief-stricken father moves Ernestine and her 15-year-old sister, Ermina, from Pensacola, Florida, to Brooklyn, New York, mistakenly believing that his new guru and savior, Father Divine of the Peace Mission Movement, is headquartered there. Father Divine turns out to be in Philadelphia, but Godfrey continues to follow his strict religious teachings as the Crumps rebuild, including a life of celibacy, sobriety, and solemnity on Sundays. Godfrey retreats deeper into his faith, determined to provide a better life for his daughters with this fresh start, although Ernestine and Ermina are less enthusiastic about his newfound religiosity. He gets a long-awaited letter from Father Divine that encourages him to follow the mission (and donate money), and he gives each Crump a new, churchly name. Godfrey keeps a notebook in which he constantly dashes off questions that he will ask the Father when they meet.

On the same day, Ernestine receives a sewing pattern in the mail, which her mother selected for a graduation dress. Godfrey, who has been inattentive, is happily surprised to learn that Ernestine will be the first Crump to graduate high school. Ernestine sews the dress throughout the play. Everything changes when Lily Ann Green, their late mother’s radical communist sister who has been living in Harlem, arrives unexpectedly at the Crumps’ door. She is wearing a designer suit and has suitcases, intending to move in. She was unable to attend her sister’s burial, but she is ostensibly there to help raise her sister’s daughters. To Godfrey’s dismay, Lily smokes and drinks, laughs cynically about religion, and likes to reminisce about a time when Godfrey did, too. He also used to flirt with Lily and she attempts to reignite this spark, which makes him uneasy. Lily is educated, and she blames her inability to hold down a worthwhile job on white discomfort with a smart, qualified Black woman.

Lily speaks frequently about a coming revolution, which piques Ernestine’s interest as a young woman seeking purpose and community. Ernestine writes a school paper on the issues faced by Black American workers, and her teacher calls an embarrassed Godfrey to discuss what she perceives as communist undertones in the paper. Godfrey blames Lily, who argues that Ernestine is just thinking for herself. One morning, as the Crumps get ready to go to the Peace Mission, a hungover Lily regales her nieces by talking about an attractive Cuban man she danced with, demonstrating a mambo with Ernestine. Godfrey enters and intervenes, and Lily reminds him again about when he used to drink and touch her. She kisses him. Relenting momentarily, he then backs away, admitting that she tempts him. He leaves, disappearing without a word for several days. A relentless rainstorm accosts the city, and Lily is left to look after and protect her nieces.

Godfrey rides the subway aimlessly, where he meets a white German woman who is lost and distressed. She asks for his help, and he is reluctant at first. He offers to take her to the Mission, and she gratefully agrees. When Godfrey finally returns home, he introduces her to everyone as his new wife, Gerte. The girls are shocked that their father would marry so soon after their mother’s death and are even more aghast that his new wife is white. Gerte tries to connect with the two girls, but they are both afraid of her. Lily is hurt, having hoped that Godfrey might marry her. Her drinking increases, and her relationship with Gerte is contentious. Godfrey takes Gerte and his two daughters to the event he has been anticipating for months, the Holy Communion Banquet at the Peace Mission, where he will finally meet Father Divine. The food is so lavish and plentiful that it makes Gerte uncomfortable. Godfrey is devastated when Father Divine misses the event due to a flat tire; he is desperate to ask his questions and believes he needs answers to move on from his grief.

The family falls into a routine, although the neighborhood kids are teasing the girls about their white stepmother. Lily drinks all night and then comes home to drink away her hangover. One afternoon, Godfrey and Gerte head out to the movies, only to return covered in blood after some racist white men smashed a bottle on Godfrey’s head for having a white wife. Ernestine blames Gerte, who means well but demonstrates that she doesn’t understand racism. Lily reproaches Godfrey, seeing the image of a Black man bleeding over an unharmed white woman as symbolic of racial strife in America. Godfrey tells Lily to go and find some people who agree with her, so she leaves the apartment and their lives.

After graduation, Ernestine moves to Harlem to join Lily’s revolution. She doesn’t find her, but she gets a college degree and joins the Civil Rights movement. Eventually, Lily’s body surfaces, bearing the evidence of drug use. Ernestine reads books about race and Marxism that make her feel close to her aunt. She visits her father and stepmother in Brooklyn, always returning to the fight for change.