Lydia Diamond wrote the 2006 play, Stick Fly, about an old-money upperclass African-American family who gather at their Martha's Vineyard home, in part because she was tired of always seeing African Americans play downtrodden characters. As she said on NPR's Morning Edition, "I started out as an actress and I remember thinking, 'I wish I could be in a play where I got to wear pretty clothes and didn't have to be in gunnysack.'"