Endesha Ida Mae Holland's eventful life is no doubt an impressive, inspirational story. Not in the saccharine, Hallmark movie-of-the-week kind of way, but in the harrowing, honest style of Maya Angelou or Toni Morrison.

She grew up in the Deep South, a child of Greenwood, Miss. Like many poor black women living in the Delta during the 1950s, her childhood was crippled by the lack of opportunity, third-world social conditions and omnipresent racism.

If there's one problem with the story of her unlikely rise to success, as told in the autobiographical play "From the Mississippi Delta," now running at Hattiloo Theatre, it's that what starts out as a tribute to all the struggling sisters who guided her, ends up as a tribute to her own gumption.

Not that Holland isn't worthy of praise.

This 1991 Off-Broadway play, backed by Oprah Winfrey, culminated her career as a respected academic and playwright. She revisited her story in her 1997 book, "From the Mississippi Delta." When she died in 2006 at age 61, she was an emeritus professor at the University of Southern California.

One of her life's defining moments came at age 11, when she was raped by a white man and then given $5 for her trouble.

It is the most significant episode in the first act of the play -- the moment she realizes that she's not a girl anymore.

But the rape and its fallout -- her turning tricks to avoid having to work in the cotton field -- is just a small part of her broader and often comical portrait of Southern life.

The three actresses in the play -- Talibah Arnett, Nia Glenn-Lopez, and Maya Geri Robinson -- switch characters and share roles. Sometimes they portray the young narrator, called Phelia in the play. Sometimes they are men, white and black. The most interesting character is Phelia's inspiration, Ain't Baby, a renowned midwife and earth-mother type who embodies self-reliance and dignity. Another is Miss Rosebud, a gruff, older woman who sits on her porch and throws bricks at anyone who would step on her water meter.

Early in the first act, Holland suggests where the play might be headed. "I was always conscious of my inferiority until the civil rights movement came to the town I grew up in."

But we're well into the second act before Freedom Summer arrives. She doesn't spend enough time explaining how education suddenly becomes important to her life. Imagine "The Miracle Worker" without the moment Helen Keller learns words, and you'll understand what's missing. Holland just seems to like the idea of getting out of Greenwood. After that, the tale fast-forwards into Phelia's success story, complete with a shout-out to other achievers. And then I got my G.E.D., and then I graduated from college, and finally I would like to thank Alice Walker for this opportunity to....

"From the Mississippi Delta" seems disconnected and unfocused at times, but that is no fault of Phil Darius Wallace's direction, which uses the theater's small space effectively and gets good performances from his cast.

It would be interesting to see how an Alice Walker would readapt Holland's narrative to the stage. Perhaps her story would be about how the civil rights movement indeed affected her life, and not the more cliched message that everyone should try to get an education.

-- Christopher Blank: 529-2305

"From the Mississippi Delta"

Through Oct. 4 at the Hattiloo Theatre. Shows are 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $10-$18. Call 525-0009.