Alice Childress was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and raised an educated in Harlem. She pursued a variety of jobs, including assistant machinist, photo retoucher, saleslady, and insurance agent as she worked relentlessly to gain audiences for her work as a playwright, actress, and novelist. She also did domestic work for a few months; the day she quit she surprised her employer by throwing her keys at her head. The woman later asked her to return to work. This "only work" that Childress could find turned out to be valuable, for it provided her with firsthand experience of the job situation she would later depict in Like One of the Family. Her works include numerous plays including the Obie-Award Winning Trouble in Mind, as well as books for young adults such as A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich.