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Wars in general, and civil wars in particular ravage countries and tear people and the world apart into pieces. In wars soldiers use sexual violence against young girls and women and leave thousands of them as ruined aftermath of wars. After the end of war its brutality continues with damaged women and victimizes them once again through the society that refuses to accept ruined women as victims, on the contrary it pushes them to brothels as prostitutes. Raped women are enslaved and used as damaged goods by their societies which oblige them to trade their bodies and sell sex. In 2004, Lynn Nottage traveled to Africa to meet Congolese women in the refugee camps of Uganda to write about the damage, brutalities and the atrocities of the barbaric government and the equally cruel rebel militants that women have suffered during the never-ending civil conflict (1993 -2007) in their country DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) . The massacre in Eastern Congo inspired Nottage to explore the unimaginable suffering and nightmarish acts of violence and multiple rape Congolese women victims experienced. According to Nottage, all of the women she interviewed were raped. Most were raped by multiple men. Some of the women helplessly watched as their children were murdered in front of them. Nottage realized that she would create her own play; one that would include the heart-wrenching narratives of the women she met in Africa, whom the female characters of Ruined will be based upon their real experiences. Nottage said. “I believe in engaging people emotionally, because I think they react more out of emotion ‘ than when they are’ preached to, told how to feel. It was important that this not become a documentary, or agitprop.” The result was a tragic, yet beautiful drama about pain, survival and holding onto hope while living through hell, inspired by the true accounts of women who survived such cruelty. (Emily Wilson,The Power of “Ruined ”, 2011) Lynn Nottage : Biography and Literary Background : Lynn Nottage was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1964. She got her high school diploma in 1982 and received her B.A. degree from Brown University in 1986. She continued her studies and received her M.F.A. degree in playwriting at Yale School of Drama in 1989. Nottage is an associate professor of theater at Columbia University and a lecturer in playwriting at Yale University. In 1993, her short play, Poof! won the Heideman Award. In 2003, her drama Intimate Apparel, won major awards including the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Francesca Primus Prize and the Steinberg Award. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2009 for Ruined. Nottage’s plays are being produced the world wide. Her works often deal with the lives of women of African descent . Her inspiration came from the women in her family; her grandmother, mother, and other women were the nurses, teachers, activists and artists in the Brooklyn neighborhood where she grew up. (www.tbehistorymakers.com)
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