A Raisin in the Sun [PB,2004]

by Lorraine Hansberry

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. Vintage Books,2004

Unknown Binding

About the author

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was an American playwright and writer. She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of black Americans in Chicago living under racial segregation. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" At the age of 29, she won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award – making her the first African-American dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant in the 1940 U.S. Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee.
After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she worked with other black intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggles for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry also wrote about being a lesbian and the oppression of gay people. She died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 34 during the Broadway run of her play The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window in 1965. Hansberry inspired the Nina Simone song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black", whose title-line came from Hansberry's autobiographical play.

Reviews

[Ege Bolat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think unlike many political works Hansberry refuses to reduce her characters to symbols of oppression. They remain contradictory, ambitious, selfish, loving, frightened and uncertain. Their political reality shapes them of course, but never really defines them. The play is therefore not simply about racism, but the struggle to remain fully human under conditions that continually threaten to reduce humanity to economics, gender, race and class.

I suppose the most important philosophical distinction in the play is the difference between living and becoming, after all the younger family survives, they eat, work, pay rent and continue existing. Yet Hansberry insists that biological survival isn’t the same as genuine life. Throughout the play every family member desires transformation. For example Walter wants recognition, Benny wants intellectual self definition, Ruth wants stability mama wants continuity and Travis represents unrealized possibility. These desires differ dramatically yet all emerge from the same existential need, to not merely continue existing but to become someone. So in my understanding poverty in this case doesn’t restrict only consumption but also imagination.

So I suppose the question becomes how does a human being persevere the capacity to imagine a future when every social institution repeatedly limits that imagination?

[Iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a book, it was a 3 star for me as I was reading it. As a play, I bet it would be so dynamic to watch! Ultimately landed on 4 stars, because I found myself wondering what happened next with the Younger family. How did they acclimate? What was it like for Travis at a new school (assumed that he moved far enough for this to be true)?

Mama Lena lecturing Beneatha about loving someone at their lowest was more important then when they're at their best was so big hearted and caused me to reflect.

[Kae · Rating 5 out of 5]

This play just so deeply captures the complexity of humanity. I recommend that everyone read this at some point in their life as see this characters to their core, read beyond the stereotypes that they represent and see what causes them to live out those tropes.