Playwright Lynn Nottage's won the Pulitzer Prize, announced Monday, for Ruined, her play about the women of a Congolese brothel owned by an earth mother named Mama
Nadi..

"I wanted to tell the story of these women and the war
in the Congo and I couldn't find anything about them in the newspapers
or in the library, so I felt I had to get on a plane and go to Africa
and find the story myself," Nottage told the Associated Press.  "I
felt there was a complete absence in the media of their narrative. It's
very different now, but when I went in 2004 that was definitely the
case."

The drama currently is on view at
off-Broadway's Manhattan Theatre Club and is a co-production with
Chicago's Goodman Theatre.