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Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
A revealing portrait of one of the most gifted and charismatic, yet least understood, Black artists and intellectuals of the twentieth century.
Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work—until now. In 2018, Hansberry will get the recognition she deserves with the PBS American Masters documentary "Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart" and Imani Perry's multi-dimensional, illuminating biography, Looking for Lorraine.
After the success of A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry used her prominence in myriad ways: challenging President Kennedy and his brother to take bolder stances on Civil Rights, supporting African anti-colonial leaders, and confronting the romantic racism of the Beat poets and Village hipsters. Though she married a man, she identified as lesbian and, risking censure and the prospect of being outed, joined one of the nation's first lesbian organizations. Hansberry associated with many activists, writers, and musicians, including Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, among others. Looking for Lorraine is a powerful insight into Hansberry's extraordinary life—a life that was tragically cut far too short.
Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work—until now. In 2018, Hansberry will get the recognition she deserves with the PBS American Masters documentary "Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart" and Imani Perry's multi-dimensional, illuminating biography, Looking for Lorraine.
After the success of A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry used her prominence in myriad ways: challenging President Kennedy and his brother to take bolder stances on Civil Rights, supporting African anti-colonial leaders, and confronting the romantic racism of the Beat poets and Village hipsters. Though she married a man, she identified as lesbian and, risking censure and the prospect of being outed, joined one of the nation's first lesbian organizations. Hansberry associated with many activists, writers, and musicians, including Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, among others. Looking for Lorraine is a powerful insight into Hansberry's extraordinary life—a life that was tragically cut far too short.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published September 18, 2018
265 people are currently reading
7425 people want to read
About the author
Imani Perry
35 books968 followersImani Perry, a professor of African American studies at Princeton, first appeared in print at age 3 in the Birmingham (Alabama) News in a photo of her and her parents at a protest against police brutality. She has published widely on topics ranging from racial inequality to hip-hop and is active across various media. She earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a bachelor's degree from Yale University.
(from http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/ar...)
(from http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/ar...)
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December 20, 2025
Imani Perry is unreal. Her skill in blending research with heart forward history/biography is unmatched. Lorraine’s story in lesser hands feels thin. Not here. Rich. Well rounded. And impressive.
February 11, 2019
“Looking For Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry” (2018) is a superb fact filled biographical work that explores the life of this famous playwright, activist, intellectual and feminist artist- writer. Although Lorraine (LH) was widely recognized and celebrated when her award winning play “A Raisin In The Sun” (1959) appeared on Broadway, author Imani Perry clearly illustrated there were many things previously unknown in LH’s short and extraordinary life, and this is the first significant book of her life written in decades. Imani Perry PhD is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University; and has earned multiple degrees from Yale and Harvard University.
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was the youngest of four children born in a middle class South side Chicago family. Their lives would drastically change with her parent’s purchase of a home in a white neighborhood. Confronted by angry white mobs, a brick would be thrown through their window, narrowly missing Lorraine. LH father, Carl, a real estate developer, would file (and win) a housing discrimination case that would be heard by the Supreme Court (1940’s). Lorraine’s mother was also active in the Republican Party. Clearly these events and her parent’s actions and views would be the foundation that shaped LH’s young life to be politically, socially and publically engaged regarding African-American culture and causes.
Declining to attend a favored or recommended black college, Lorraine attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison where she was soon fully accepted by white students. While in college, she developed her interest for art, theater, and progressive politics that supported civil rights. Mentored by Langston Hughes and W.E.B. Du Bois, she briefly studied in Mexico, and attended an illegal political conference in Uruguay, South America. LH accepted the fact that her life would be subjected to U.S. government monitoring and surveillance. In 1952, her passport was confiscated and revoked by government officials.
The marriage of LH to Robert Nemiroff (m.1952-1964) no doubt, raised a lot of eyebrows! RN was a white, Jewish intellectual, songwriter and playwright and a grad student at NYU-- where the couple had met at a protest rally. LH acknowledged her love for him, yet her consuming desire to be a writer and artist would always be her first priority. RN unconditionally accepted, loved, and financially supported his wife despite the complexities and conditions that quietly defined their marriage. RN was with Lorraine when she passed away, and insured her legacy by carefully preserving and filing her papers, correspondence, and all writing that is held in a Harlem, NY archive.
The notable friendships of LH with literary intellectual James Baldwin (1924-1987) and singer-entertainer Nina Simone (1933-2003) was described by Perry as “The Trinity”. It was interesting to see how the acceptance and support of these friends influenced (black) cultural commentary, news media, writing and music in the 1960’s. While LH remained lesser known, Perry observed that Baldwin and Simone were black American icons—celebrated in films, documentaries, books and recordings. In the future, she is hoping LH will be more publically acknowledged and recognized.
In 1963, LH was invited to NYC by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to participate in a (historical) panel of influential intellectuals to discuss the social racial unrest in Birmingham, Alabama. This meeting (arranged by James Baldwin) undoubtedly influenced policies that led to the Civil Rights Act (1964).
It was noticeable that Perry avoided speculative writing about LH's close personal and intimate relationships, and referenced LH's own writing, plays, short stories etc. to tell her story instead. This must have been challenging -- as LH was a (closeted) lesbian, which in 1950’s-60’s homosexuality was unacceptable in the black American community. As a radical outspoken black feminist, socialist and Marxist; LH would need her marriage and her husband’s unwavering support for her own security and safety. Overall, Perry has presented the life and times of LH with a tremendous amount of dignity and respect. In addition, Perry has written: May We Forever Stand (2018) – More Beautiful Than Terrible (2011) – Prophets of The Hood (2004).
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was the youngest of four children born in a middle class South side Chicago family. Their lives would drastically change with her parent’s purchase of a home in a white neighborhood. Confronted by angry white mobs, a brick would be thrown through their window, narrowly missing Lorraine. LH father, Carl, a real estate developer, would file (and win) a housing discrimination case that would be heard by the Supreme Court (1940’s). Lorraine’s mother was also active in the Republican Party. Clearly these events and her parent’s actions and views would be the foundation that shaped LH’s young life to be politically, socially and publically engaged regarding African-American culture and causes.
Declining to attend a favored or recommended black college, Lorraine attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison where she was soon fully accepted by white students. While in college, she developed her interest for art, theater, and progressive politics that supported civil rights. Mentored by Langston Hughes and W.E.B. Du Bois, she briefly studied in Mexico, and attended an illegal political conference in Uruguay, South America. LH accepted the fact that her life would be subjected to U.S. government monitoring and surveillance. In 1952, her passport was confiscated and revoked by government officials.
The marriage of LH to Robert Nemiroff (m.1952-1964) no doubt, raised a lot of eyebrows! RN was a white, Jewish intellectual, songwriter and playwright and a grad student at NYU-- where the couple had met at a protest rally. LH acknowledged her love for him, yet her consuming desire to be a writer and artist would always be her first priority. RN unconditionally accepted, loved, and financially supported his wife despite the complexities and conditions that quietly defined their marriage. RN was with Lorraine when she passed away, and insured her legacy by carefully preserving and filing her papers, correspondence, and all writing that is held in a Harlem, NY archive.
The notable friendships of LH with literary intellectual James Baldwin (1924-1987) and singer-entertainer Nina Simone (1933-2003) was described by Perry as “The Trinity”. It was interesting to see how the acceptance and support of these friends influenced (black) cultural commentary, news media, writing and music in the 1960’s. While LH remained lesser known, Perry observed that Baldwin and Simone were black American icons—celebrated in films, documentaries, books and recordings. In the future, she is hoping LH will be more publically acknowledged and recognized.
In 1963, LH was invited to NYC by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to participate in a (historical) panel of influential intellectuals to discuss the social racial unrest in Birmingham, Alabama. This meeting (arranged by James Baldwin) undoubtedly influenced policies that led to the Civil Rights Act (1964).
It was noticeable that Perry avoided speculative writing about LH's close personal and intimate relationships, and referenced LH's own writing, plays, short stories etc. to tell her story instead. This must have been challenging -- as LH was a (closeted) lesbian, which in 1950’s-60’s homosexuality was unacceptable in the black American community. As a radical outspoken black feminist, socialist and Marxist; LH would need her marriage and her husband’s unwavering support for her own security and safety. Overall, Perry has presented the life and times of LH with a tremendous amount of dignity and respect. In addition, Perry has written: May We Forever Stand (2018) – More Beautiful Than Terrible (2011) – Prophets of The Hood (2004).
January 24, 2021
Lorraine Hansberry is so underrated. And it makes me so mad. Her famous play A Raisin in the Sun is brilliant (definitely a recommendation to anyone who hasn't read/ seen it yet) but she was such an important figure of her time, I'm genuinely surprised that she has been forgotten.
Only few biographers have taken on the task of documenting her life. Luckily for us, Imani Perry was one of them. Instead of option for a conventional biography, she chose to write a "third person memoir", which allowed her to interrogate Lorraine's legacy with a lot more love and care. Reading Looking for Lorraine is a truly immersive experience that brings you much closer to Hansberry and makes you curious about her work. The only gripe I have with the book is that it's too short. There were some areas of Lorraine's life (especially in regards to her marriage to Robert Nemiroff) that remained question marks for me, even after this read.
In the book, Imani Perry claims that Robert Nemiroff did everything in his power to carry on Lorraine's legacy. However, the workings of their relationship remained unclear. They married in 1953, informally separated in 1957 (as Lorraine explored lesbian relationships) and officially divorced in 1962. Their professional relationship lasted until her death in 1965.
But upon Lorraine's death, Robert Nemiroff donated all of her personal and professional effects to the New York Public Library. In doing so, he blocked access to all materials related to Hansberry's lesbianism, meaning that no scholars or biographers had access for more than 50 years. Unfortunately, this isn’t mentioned or discussed in Imani Perry’s biography.
Nonetheless, Looking for Lorraine is a true success and a biography that I would recommend to anyone who is interested in Lorraine and wants to discover new sides to her. In this "review", I mainly wanna go through all the new information that I've learned, so if that's interesting to you, feel free to stick around!
Lorraine, after all, was a Black lesbian woman born into the established Black middle class who became a Greenwich Village bohemian leftist married to a man, a Jewish communist songwriter. She cast her lot with the working classes and became a widely famous writer. Moreover, she drank too much, died early of cancer, loved some wonderful women, and yet lived with an unrelenting loneliness. It's easy to tell all of these stories as gossip. Imani Perry, however, consciously sought out to do so much more than that—to great success.
One of the first quotes that I underlined was Lorraine's harsh criticism of Richard Wright's The Outsider. She truly channeled her inner Zora Neale Hurston energy there, and daaamn, she ripped him to fucking shreds: “He exalts brutality and nothingness; he negates the reality of our struggle for freedom and yet works energetically in the behalf of our oppressors; he has lost his own dignity and destroyed his talents.” I mean, ouch. I'll remember to never get on Lorraine's bad side in the afterlife.
Among the things I found most interesting was Lorraine's commitment to communist ideas. I didn't know that by 1951, she had unequivocally embraced communism. She had attended a Communist Party meeting at Wisconsin in January of 1950, but it wasn’t until she moved to New York that she claimed it. In a letter to Edythe, she wrote:
Lorraine didn’t insist on nonviolence, she believed that all forms of struggle and protest were necessary for change towards a more just society. According to her, the “right way” hadn’t yielded the necessary change. And so, she said, “we must now lie down in the streets, tie up traffic, do whatever we can—take to the hills with guns if necessary—and fight back. False people remark these days on our ‘bitterness.’ Why, of course, we are bitter.”
We also learn that Alice Childress would have been the first Black female playwright to have her play performed on Broadway, had she not refused to change the message of her play. Basically, the produces wanted to change the core message of her play (Trouble in Mind) and wanted to mute Childress' criticism of racism within the theatre world and her scathing portrayal of the white characters in her play in particular. This doesn't make Lorraine's achievement with A Raisin in the Sun any smaller, but I think Childress' story has been dismissed and condemned to oblivion. We must rectify that!
Lorraine's rocky journey to becoming a writer in the first place was also interesting to me. In her journal, she wrote: “1. I am a writer. I am going to write. 2. I am going to become a writer.” And her determination was clear from the start, even though, she was a perfectionist and wasn't satisfied with anything she put to paper. In a letter, she wrote: “This of course is why I don’t produce a goddamn things—I am too full of dreams!”
One little thing that made me feel very connected to Lorraine is the fact that she, apparently, annotated her books, e.g. de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, in the marginalia, just like me. I also found it so endearing to learn that she wrote lists into her journals quite frequently (SAME!). On April 1, 1960, she wrote two columns in her datebook titled “I like” and “I hate.”
Things she liked were: “My husband—most of the time / being admired for my looks / Dorothy Secules eyes /Dorothy Secules / My homosexuality.” Among the things she hated were “Being asked to speak / Speaking / My loneliness / My homosexuality / What has happened to Sidney Poitier / Racism / People who defend it”.
I mean, these lists are so mundane but they reveal so much about her character. In case you're wondering the reason she fell out of love with Sidney Poitier was due to his increasingly moderate views.
Imani Perry definitely made me interested in Lorraine's short stories and her lesser known plays, especially Les Blancs. I loved the little insights and analysis that she provided for them. And when it comes to Raisin, I especially enjoyed Imani's discussion of how misunderstood and misinterpreted the play was at the time. Critics thought that it was just wonderful how much the Younger family was just like any other American family. Some people were ecstatic to find that “it didn’t really have to be about Negroes at all!” And Imani Perry raises some important questions:
The misunderstanding of the play haunted Lorraine from the beginning. She spent years trying to correct the misunderstandings of the play in various ways, including rewrites of the play and a more explicit elaboration of politics in her later artistic works. But over the next decades some members of the Black Left would continue to reject Lorraine as a symbol of assimilationist politics. It really breaks my heart that this woman who so desperately wanted to become a writer, achieved that goal and yet had to pay such a high price for it.
One of my favorite chapters was Imani's exploration of Lorraine's friendship to Jimmy (James Baldwin) and Nina Simone. What I found particularly interesting was the question of labels and sexuality. Jimmy didn’t refer to himself as gay, he just happened to “fall in love with a boy” a number of times, whereas Lorraine, though closeted, embraced the words lesbian and homosexual to define herself, at least in private.
We also learn that Jimmy sought counsel and criticism from Lorraine and sent her his manuscript of his novel Another Country, pleading with her to be honest with him. I mean, how cute is that?
But one of the most depressing moments in the book also had to do with Jimmy: Lorraine didn't know that she had cancer for the longest time and so when the disease truly revealed itself, she had only a few month left to live. Among other things, she asked herself: “Do I remain a revolutionary? Intellectually—without a doubt. But am I prepared to give my body to the struggle?” Jimmy later remembers that she had a visceral bodily reaction at the time of Lorraine's passing. He lay down with a fever the night she died. And he wasn't surprised to learn the next day that she had passed.
Years later, he also didn't bemoan that Lorraine hadn’t lived to see the progress, because he wasn’t sure much progress had been made after all in the decade after her death. Bitterly he wrote, “Perhaps it is just as well, after all, that she did not live to see with the outward eye what she saw so clearly with the inward one.” I mean, how depressing is that.
I also didn't know that Malcolm X attended Lorraine's funeral and thereby risking his life. Like Lorraine, Malcolm was pursuing an anti-colonial, internationalist model of freedom. Before her death, they’d had some lovely moments together. She’d taken him to task for once berating her in public for marrying a white man. He apologised, and they talked about the world they both imagined could be, with struggle. They both ran out of time. Three weeks after Lorraine’s funeral, on Nina’s birthday, Malcolm was murdered.
Only few biographers have taken on the task of documenting her life. Luckily for us, Imani Perry was one of them. Instead of option for a conventional biography, she chose to write a "third person memoir", which allowed her to interrogate Lorraine's legacy with a lot more love and care. Reading Looking for Lorraine is a truly immersive experience that brings you much closer to Hansberry and makes you curious about her work. The only gripe I have with the book is that it's too short. There were some areas of Lorraine's life (especially in regards to her marriage to Robert Nemiroff) that remained question marks for me, even after this read.
In the book, Imani Perry claims that Robert Nemiroff did everything in his power to carry on Lorraine's legacy. However, the workings of their relationship remained unclear. They married in 1953, informally separated in 1957 (as Lorraine explored lesbian relationships) and officially divorced in 1962. Their professional relationship lasted until her death in 1965.
But upon Lorraine's death, Robert Nemiroff donated all of her personal and professional effects to the New York Public Library. In doing so, he blocked access to all materials related to Hansberry's lesbianism, meaning that no scholars or biographers had access for more than 50 years. Unfortunately, this isn’t mentioned or discussed in Imani Perry’s biography.
Nonetheless, Looking for Lorraine is a true success and a biography that I would recommend to anyone who is interested in Lorraine and wants to discover new sides to her. In this "review", I mainly wanna go through all the new information that I've learned, so if that's interesting to you, feel free to stick around!
And, I am quite certain, there is only one internal quarrel: how much of the truth to tell?In the first chapter, Imani Perry describes the difficulties of writing a biography. Access to information is limited but speculation isn't all that welcome either. And especially with such an interesting figure as Lorraine was, one can easily fall into the trap of scandalising her life, work and impact.
— Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine, after all, was a Black lesbian woman born into the established Black middle class who became a Greenwich Village bohemian leftist married to a man, a Jewish communist songwriter. She cast her lot with the working classes and became a widely famous writer. Moreover, she drank too much, died early of cancer, loved some wonderful women, and yet lived with an unrelenting loneliness. It's easy to tell all of these stories as gossip. Imani Perry, however, consciously sought out to do so much more than that—to great success.
One of the first quotes that I underlined was Lorraine's harsh criticism of Richard Wright's The Outsider. She truly channeled her inner Zora Neale Hurston energy there, and daaamn, she ripped him to fucking shreds: “He exalts brutality and nothingness; he negates the reality of our struggle for freedom and yet works energetically in the behalf of our oppressors; he has lost his own dignity and destroyed his talents.” I mean, ouch. I'll remember to never get on Lorraine's bad side in the afterlife.
Among the things I found most interesting was Lorraine's commitment to communist ideas. I didn't know that by 1951, she had unequivocally embraced communism. She had attended a Communist Party meeting at Wisconsin in January of 1950, but it wasn’t until she moved to New York that she claimed it. In a letter to Edythe, she wrote:
I am sick of poverty, lynching, stupid wars and the universal maltreatment of my people and obsessed with a rather desperate desire for a new world for me and my brothers. So dear friend, I must perhaps go to jail. … remember this “Communist!”We must remember that being a communist wasn’t strange (or that uncommon) back then. It didn’t have the sting of revulsion attached to it that one often senses today. However, it was still a position that made you vulnerable to attacks. I found it refreshing to learn that Lorraine didn't shy away from being radical in her views, it's something that I've only come to embrace myself after reading Angela Y. Davis' Are Prisons Obsolete?
Lorraine didn’t insist on nonviolence, she believed that all forms of struggle and protest were necessary for change towards a more just society. According to her, the “right way” hadn’t yielded the necessary change. And so, she said, “we must now lie down in the streets, tie up traffic, do whatever we can—take to the hills with guns if necessary—and fight back. False people remark these days on our ‘bitterness.’ Why, of course, we are bitter.”
We also learn that Alice Childress would have been the first Black female playwright to have her play performed on Broadway, had she not refused to change the message of her play. Basically, the produces wanted to change the core message of her play (Trouble in Mind) and wanted to mute Childress' criticism of racism within the theatre world and her scathing portrayal of the white characters in her play in particular. This doesn't make Lorraine's achievement with A Raisin in the Sun any smaller, but I think Childress' story has been dismissed and condemned to oblivion. We must rectify that!
Lorraine's rocky journey to becoming a writer in the first place was also interesting to me. In her journal, she wrote: “1. I am a writer. I am going to write. 2. I am going to become a writer.” And her determination was clear from the start, even though, she was a perfectionist and wasn't satisfied with anything she put to paper. In a letter, she wrote: “This of course is why I don’t produce a goddamn things—I am too full of dreams!”
One little thing that made me feel very connected to Lorraine is the fact that she, apparently, annotated her books, e.g. de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, in the marginalia, just like me. I also found it so endearing to learn that she wrote lists into her journals quite frequently (SAME!). On April 1, 1960, she wrote two columns in her datebook titled “I like” and “I hate.”
Things she liked were: “My husband—most of the time / being admired for my looks / Dorothy Secules eyes /Dorothy Secules / My homosexuality.” Among the things she hated were “Being asked to speak / Speaking / My loneliness / My homosexuality / What has happened to Sidney Poitier / Racism / People who defend it”.
I mean, these lists are so mundane but they reveal so much about her character. In case you're wondering the reason she fell out of love with Sidney Poitier was due to his increasingly moderate views.
Imani Perry definitely made me interested in Lorraine's short stories and her lesser known plays, especially Les Blancs. I loved the little insights and analysis that she provided for them. And when it comes to Raisin, I especially enjoyed Imani's discussion of how misunderstood and misinterpreted the play was at the time. Critics thought that it was just wonderful how much the Younger family was just like any other American family. Some people were ecstatic to find that “it didn’t really have to be about Negroes at all!” And Imani Perry raises some important questions:
It was curious that the public so easily embraced the play. Why didn’t A Raisin in the Sun trouble them?That's a question I have often asked myself when a mainly white audiences celebrates a piece of media that is supposed to be anti-racist. [Some of ya'll might remember my rant for To Kill A Mockingbird.] That's always a red flag for me.
The misunderstanding of the play haunted Lorraine from the beginning. She spent years trying to correct the misunderstandings of the play in various ways, including rewrites of the play and a more explicit elaboration of politics in her later artistic works. But over the next decades some members of the Black Left would continue to reject Lorraine as a symbol of assimilationist politics. It really breaks my heart that this woman who so desperately wanted to become a writer, achieved that goal and yet had to pay such a high price for it.
One of my favorite chapters was Imani's exploration of Lorraine's friendship to Jimmy (James Baldwin) and Nina Simone. What I found particularly interesting was the question of labels and sexuality. Jimmy didn’t refer to himself as gay, he just happened to “fall in love with a boy” a number of times, whereas Lorraine, though closeted, embraced the words lesbian and homosexual to define herself, at least in private.
We also learn that Jimmy sought counsel and criticism from Lorraine and sent her his manuscript of his novel Another Country, pleading with her to be honest with him. I mean, how cute is that?
But one of the most depressing moments in the book also had to do with Jimmy: Lorraine didn't know that she had cancer for the longest time and so when the disease truly revealed itself, she had only a few month left to live. Among other things, she asked herself: “Do I remain a revolutionary? Intellectually—without a doubt. But am I prepared to give my body to the struggle?” Jimmy later remembers that she had a visceral bodily reaction at the time of Lorraine's passing. He lay down with a fever the night she died. And he wasn't surprised to learn the next day that she had passed.
Years later, he also didn't bemoan that Lorraine hadn’t lived to see the progress, because he wasn’t sure much progress had been made after all in the decade after her death. Bitterly he wrote, “Perhaps it is just as well, after all, that she did not live to see with the outward eye what she saw so clearly with the inward one.” I mean, how depressing is that.
I also didn't know that Malcolm X attended Lorraine's funeral and thereby risking his life. Like Lorraine, Malcolm was pursuing an anti-colonial, internationalist model of freedom. Before her death, they’d had some lovely moments together. She’d taken him to task for once berating her in public for marrying a white man. He apologised, and they talked about the world they both imagined could be, with struggle. They both ran out of time. Three weeks after Lorraine’s funeral, on Nina’s birthday, Malcolm was murdered.
October 4, 2021
A brilliant biography of the even more brilliant Lorraine Hansberry. Though her life was tragically short, dying at the age of 34 for pancreatic cancer, Lorraine accomplished so much. She was the first Black woman playwright to have a play performed on Broadway (A Raisin in the Sun). She was also a dedicated activist, focusing on the liberation of Black people from colonialism abroad and Jim Crow at home.
Author Imani Perry brings her back to life with this biography. Her analysis of Ms Hansberry's work reveals what an exceptional artist she was, and how she used her art to advocate for social justice. Unfortunately, decades after her death, there is still so much work to be done.
Author Imani Perry brings her back to life with this biography. Her analysis of Ms Hansberry's work reveals what an exceptional artist she was, and how she used her art to advocate for social justice. Unfortunately, decades after her death, there is still so much work to be done.
March 24, 2019
Although I haven't quite finished Looking for Lorraine (I'm at the 80% mark), I've decided to set out a few thoughts today to coincide with the publication of the book.
I first became aware of the name "Lorraine Hansberry" while watching Raoul Peck's powerful documentary I Am Not Your Negro, which explores racism in the US through the writings and reminiscences of James Baldwin. Referencing a meeting in 1963 with then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to discuss the state of interracial relations, Baldwin talks about a resplendent presence at the meeting, a woman who stunned RFK with her determination about what needed to be done (not that RFK wanted to hear those things), but who unfortunately died young. That woman was Lorraine Hansberry and, having looked her up, I jumped at the opportunity to receive an advance copy of Looking for Lorraine for review purposes.
This biography is beyond good. Imani Perry does a wonderful job dragging Lorraine from the shadows, where her premature death confined her, and out into the array of black writers and activists that helped shape the struggle for racial equality in the 50s and 60s. As Perry says, James Baldwin and Nina Simone (both close friends of Lorraine's) were after the 60s criticised for saying uncomfortable things, however both were reinstated recently as important figures of the history of black struggle. This biography serves the purpose of allowing Lorraine to join them, take the place that she rightfully deserves, and be 'remembered fully' (p. 114), as she would have wanted.
The book touched me with its sensitive portrayal of Lorraine, a woman the writer never met (as she was born long after Lorraine's passing), but who she grew up feeling very close to partly due to her own interest in black history but also, importantly, due to her adoptive father's interest in and love for Lorraine Perry. So young Imani had privileged access to Lorraine in a way; her father's interest fuelled her own passion, which led to further research for the purposes of this book. One can also see several parallels between Lorraine and Imani: loyalty to the race; a passion of equality; a sharing of radical politics. Imani never obliterates her self from her account of Lorraine without, however, using the book as an opportunity to promote her own agenda. One gets the sense of the younger woman responding to Lorraine's work and life choices, as if the older woman was another self or role-model. The result is a wonderfully written book which carried me away with its rhythm and tenderness, but which is also thoroughly researched and effectively organised into chapters covering the following: Lorraine's childhood and university years, her radical politics, her marriage to a Jewish intellectual but also her sexual interest in and relationships with women, her plays and literary work, her friendship with James Baldwin and other important figures of the Black movement, and finally her death of cancer at the age of 34.
A timely and wonderful book that's worth more than five stars. Read it.
Thanks to netgalley and Beacon Press for the advance review copy.
I first became aware of the name "Lorraine Hansberry" while watching Raoul Peck's powerful documentary I Am Not Your Negro, which explores racism in the US through the writings and reminiscences of James Baldwin. Referencing a meeting in 1963 with then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to discuss the state of interracial relations, Baldwin talks about a resplendent presence at the meeting, a woman who stunned RFK with her determination about what needed to be done (not that RFK wanted to hear those things), but who unfortunately died young. That woman was Lorraine Hansberry and, having looked her up, I jumped at the opportunity to receive an advance copy of Looking for Lorraine for review purposes.
This biography is beyond good. Imani Perry does a wonderful job dragging Lorraine from the shadows, where her premature death confined her, and out into the array of black writers and activists that helped shape the struggle for racial equality in the 50s and 60s. As Perry says, James Baldwin and Nina Simone (both close friends of Lorraine's) were after the 60s criticised for saying uncomfortable things, however both were reinstated recently as important figures of the history of black struggle. This biography serves the purpose of allowing Lorraine to join them, take the place that she rightfully deserves, and be 'remembered fully' (p. 114), as she would have wanted.
The book touched me with its sensitive portrayal of Lorraine, a woman the writer never met (as she was born long after Lorraine's passing), but who she grew up feeling very close to partly due to her own interest in black history but also, importantly, due to her adoptive father's interest in and love for Lorraine Perry. So young Imani had privileged access to Lorraine in a way; her father's interest fuelled her own passion, which led to further research for the purposes of this book. One can also see several parallels between Lorraine and Imani: loyalty to the race; a passion of equality; a sharing of radical politics. Imani never obliterates her self from her account of Lorraine without, however, using the book as an opportunity to promote her own agenda. One gets the sense of the younger woman responding to Lorraine's work and life choices, as if the older woman was another self or role-model. The result is a wonderfully written book which carried me away with its rhythm and tenderness, but which is also thoroughly researched and effectively organised into chapters covering the following: Lorraine's childhood and university years, her radical politics, her marriage to a Jewish intellectual but also her sexual interest in and relationships with women, her plays and literary work, her friendship with James Baldwin and other important figures of the Black movement, and finally her death of cancer at the age of 34.
A timely and wonderful book that's worth more than five stars. Read it.
Thanks to netgalley and Beacon Press for the advance review copy.
November 19, 2021
SUPERB!!
As folks are now saying, Imani Perry "understood the assignment." Her critical skills--of bringing Hansberry to life and to a place in history and the arts--are impeccable.
I knew very little about Hansberry other than her genious of a play "Raisin in the Sun." Her relationships, love life, political morality, family connections, loneliness, depression, place in history are all explored with a deft pen and detailed research.
Perry's objectivity is coupled with writing that is so moving that on numerous occasions, I reread sentences/passages to savor their brillance.
I also loved learning about Hansberry's connections to Nina Simone, James Baldwin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ruby Dee, and others.
Read this book immediately. Yes, it's Nonfiction November; however Hansberry's message is timeless.
As folks are now saying, Imani Perry "understood the assignment." Her critical skills--of bringing Hansberry to life and to a place in history and the arts--are impeccable.
I knew very little about Hansberry other than her genious of a play "Raisin in the Sun." Her relationships, love life, political morality, family connections, loneliness, depression, place in history are all explored with a deft pen and detailed research.
Perry's objectivity is coupled with writing that is so moving that on numerous occasions, I reread sentences/passages to savor their brillance.
I also loved learning about Hansberry's connections to Nina Simone, James Baldwin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ruby Dee, and others.
Read this book immediately. Yes, it's Nonfiction November; however Hansberry's message is timeless.
March 7, 2020
Lorraine Hansberry was an amazing Black lesbian, commie, organizer and writer. I am now committed to learning more about her, and I'm so excited for this journey. This book is captivating and well-written, but probably not best for someone who doesn't want to hear the narrator's voice in a biography.
August 5, 2018
Born into the intellectual and activist middle class, Lorraine Hansberry's soaring intellect and inner strength allowed her to produce the work she's best known for, A Raisin in the Sun. That work arose out of family history in Chicago. She was years ahead of her time, but her background and support from her family and friends has had lasting impact. As noted elsewhere, this is a very well researched account of her life, also containing her lesser known works and details of her life that led to her choices in life. These quotes, poetic and evocative, are proof of the richness of her contribution, and add to the richness of her accomplishments. Imani Perry, herself a Princeton professor as well as author, grew up with Hansbury being held up as an example of what is possible, and has done herself and her subject well with this illuminating portrait.
I was interested to note that although she identified as lesbian, a bold declaration for her time, she was married for a few years to Robert Nemiroff, with whom she remained friends until her untimely death. The reason this interested me is that Nemiroff wrote the book for Raisin, the Tony-award winning musical based on her work. Further, the excellence of the work led to another award winning production almost 50 years after Raisin in the Sun's first appearance -- Clybourne Park, with characters referred to and present in the first play. Such is the scope and continuation of Hansberry's vision.
I was interested to note that although she identified as lesbian, a bold declaration for her time, she was married for a few years to Robert Nemiroff, with whom she remained friends until her untimely death. The reason this interested me is that Nemiroff wrote the book for Raisin, the Tony-award winning musical based on her work. Further, the excellence of the work led to another award winning production almost 50 years after Raisin in the Sun's first appearance -- Clybourne Park, with characters referred to and present in the first play. Such is the scope and continuation of Hansberry's vision.
June 9, 2023
This was EXCELLENT. I think, prior to reading this, that I did know that Lorraine Hansberry wrote "A Raisin in the Sun" based on her family's experience with moving to a white neighborhood and basically having those good, law-abiding white people launch a terror campaign against them to run them out... but that was about all I knew of her life.
So this was completely fascinating and enlightening. Imani Perry writes in such a love-letter style that you can truly feel like you know Lorraine (as much as it may be possible to) after reading it. I don't mean a literal love-letter, by the way, but her style is lovely, and lyrical, and appreciative, and accepting and awe-filled and has a depth and understanding and real love for this person that Perry admires through her work and research and such. It's just wonderful to read, or listen to. You can feel the impact that Lorraine's life and work had on Imani Perry, and I loved it.
Highly recommended.
So this was completely fascinating and enlightening. Imani Perry writes in such a love-letter style that you can truly feel like you know Lorraine (as much as it may be possible to) after reading it. I don't mean a literal love-letter, by the way, but her style is lovely, and lyrical, and appreciative, and accepting and awe-filled and has a depth and understanding and real love for this person that Perry admires through her work and research and such. It's just wonderful to read, or listen to. You can feel the impact that Lorraine's life and work had on Imani Perry, and I loved it.
Highly recommended.
April 8, 2019
I never seem to enjoy the genre of biography as much as I think I'm going to (I've realized memoir and autobiography both appeal to me more for whatever reason). But I quite liked this, at least as much as I have other biographies of historical LGBTQ people. I knew very little of her going into this and thought Lorraine was a complex, fascinating artist who fought against many different forms of social injustice from the 40s - early 60s.
January 9, 2020
Well worth a view or listen. She's influenced me as I write, as I love, and as I live.
September 8, 2018
Through the years I’ve heard about the activism and radicalism of Lorraine Hansberry, but never was there a book-length treatment of said activism. Well, thanks to Imani Perry’s careful, caring, love-filled and yes, a radiant piece of scholarship that void has now been brilliantly filled. Imani Perry refers to this work as, “less a biography than a genre yet to be named—maybe third person memoir—” and sets a course that will illuminate Lorraine’s life while avoiding the easy path of rumor and BS. “I could tell these stories as gossip. But I hope they will unfold here as something much more than that.”
Perry is much more concerned with delivering a first-rate piece of scholarship and she has certainly succeeded in doing that. She eschews the typical biographical format of dates and events and instead crafts a narrative that “comes from the sketches, snatches, and masterpieces she left behind; the scrawled upon pages, published plays, and memories: her own and others from people who witnessed and marveled at, and even some of those who resented, her genius.”
She brings Lorraine closer to us, she doesn’t just speak of Lorraine’s activism but shows us via speeches, articles, and witnesses what made Lorraine so radiant and why her star burned so brightly. Imani Perry has created a fully complete portrait of Ms. Hansberry that show us a race woman fully committed to the liberation of Black people. And Imani Perry is hopeful that her portrayal of Hansberry is just one of many to come, as she recognizes the need for Lorraine to be explored widely and deeply by other willing scholars. So, in that longing, you sense the love that Ms. Perry brings to the page, always cautious not to overstate or assume, or read into utterances and writings something that isn’t really there. She still manages to give us an intimate look at Lorraine Hansberry, fleshing out her life beyond the stardom of her most famous play, ‘ A Raisin In The Sun.’ A well balanced, thoughtful, loving treatment of Ms. Lorraine Hansberry, so thank you Ms. Imani Perry for taking the time to bring us this important book and I share your hope that other books may soon be on the way to build on the brilliance of this work.
Here Imani Perry speaks about Nina Simone and Jimmy Baldwin, both friends to Lorraine, “They paid mightily for love, love of the people. James Baldwin died in 1987. Nina Simone, in 2003. Both were widely criticized after the 1960s for their declines. Illness and grief contorted their postmovement lives, but so did truth telling. The admiration couldn’t go on forever. Celebration waned the more Nina and Jimmy knew and said about the world. They made people uncomfortable with their vulnerabilities and rage. Their loneliness deepened. Lorraine haunted. Unexpectedly but appropriately, in the twenty-first century, after death, Jimmy and Nina were reborn as icons on posters and pillows and in books upon books. Lorraine has yet to be.” This changes with the release of this fine book. Thanks to Edelweiss and Random House for an advanced DRC. The book is out Sept. 18, 2018.
Perry is much more concerned with delivering a first-rate piece of scholarship and she has certainly succeeded in doing that. She eschews the typical biographical format of dates and events and instead crafts a narrative that “comes from the sketches, snatches, and masterpieces she left behind; the scrawled upon pages, published plays, and memories: her own and others from people who witnessed and marveled at, and even some of those who resented, her genius.”
She brings Lorraine closer to us, she doesn’t just speak of Lorraine’s activism but shows us via speeches, articles, and witnesses what made Lorraine so radiant and why her star burned so brightly. Imani Perry has created a fully complete portrait of Ms. Hansberry that show us a race woman fully committed to the liberation of Black people. And Imani Perry is hopeful that her portrayal of Hansberry is just one of many to come, as she recognizes the need for Lorraine to be explored widely and deeply by other willing scholars. So, in that longing, you sense the love that Ms. Perry brings to the page, always cautious not to overstate or assume, or read into utterances and writings something that isn’t really there. She still manages to give us an intimate look at Lorraine Hansberry, fleshing out her life beyond the stardom of her most famous play, ‘ A Raisin In The Sun.’ A well balanced, thoughtful, loving treatment of Ms. Lorraine Hansberry, so thank you Ms. Imani Perry for taking the time to bring us this important book and I share your hope that other books may soon be on the way to build on the brilliance of this work.
Here Imani Perry speaks about Nina Simone and Jimmy Baldwin, both friends to Lorraine, “They paid mightily for love, love of the people. James Baldwin died in 1987. Nina Simone, in 2003. Both were widely criticized after the 1960s for their declines. Illness and grief contorted their postmovement lives, but so did truth telling. The admiration couldn’t go on forever. Celebration waned the more Nina and Jimmy knew and said about the world. They made people uncomfortable with their vulnerabilities and rage. Their loneliness deepened. Lorraine haunted. Unexpectedly but appropriately, in the twenty-first century, after death, Jimmy and Nina were reborn as icons on posters and pillows and in books upon books. Lorraine has yet to be.” This changes with the release of this fine book. Thanks to Edelweiss and Random House for an advanced DRC. The book is out Sept. 18, 2018.
June 14, 2020
I love reading biographies of artists, intellectuals, activists and Lorraine was all three. This book was so beautifully written and I learned a lot.
February 25, 2019
A communion, but far too short - like her life. I should note that after discussing this with one of my book clubs, it wasn't most readers' cup of tea (though the sample set is admittedly small). People felt it was still too distant from Hansberry and that the author in the interest of being accurate was overly cautious and left too many key items a mystery - that perhaps she should have waited until there was greater access to Hansberry's papers to write the book. This is somewhat true, but it lives up to its title for me because there is so much about her life as a radical, the complications of Raisin's success, and gems of what Baldwin and Simone thought of her (though you learn a bit more about them than you do about Hansberry in the tellings). I've read and reread "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black" multiple times and while this is far from everything, it is certainly much more about her than was out there before. I appreciated and enjoyed that.
November 27, 2018
This is a very thorough, meticulously researched and comprehensive biography of Lorraine Hansberry and I found it both interesting and illuminating. But it is also verges on the memoir (which the author acknowledges) of someone who obviously has enormous admiration and affection for Hansberry. So much so that the book felt too much like a hagiography, and for me the writing was overly subjective. Nothing really wrong with that essentially, but I prefer my biographies to show more of a balanced and nuanced view of the subject. Well worth reading, though.
August 29, 2018
I received this as a digital galley from NetGalley.
I am hard pressed to dislike a literary biography but this one was exceptionally good.
I liked how Ms. Perry divulged gaps in the historical record and took care to not infer too much. Additionally, the structure of the book made it interesting to read. Instead of going strictly chronologically, Ms. Perry arranged the chapters by topic.
Also it made me want to reread A Raisin In The Sun which is always a good thing.
I am hard pressed to dislike a literary biography but this one was exceptionally good.
I liked how Ms. Perry divulged gaps in the historical record and took care to not infer too much. Additionally, the structure of the book made it interesting to read. Instead of going strictly chronologically, Ms. Perry arranged the chapters by topic.
Also it made me want to reread A Raisin In The Sun which is always a good thing.
October 2, 2020
What an extraordinary woman! I’ve been craving a deeper knowledge and connection to my queer history. Being bi can be lonely sometimes. Reading about awesome queer folks really helps. The narration was excellent, I highly recommend the audiobook.
April 5, 2022
I didn’t even know that the author of A Raisin In The Sun was a Black woman. Thank you Imani Perry, for bringing the story of Lorraine Hansberry’s life to us. She was a human who worked hard to spread words of truth and was taken from us too early.
February 4, 2019
I want to start this review with a simple statement: This might be one of the best biographies I have read to date. I don't throw around this sentence lightly but from start to finish I was engrossed in Imani Perry's "Looking for Lorraine. The Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry".
Based on archival material (some of which has only been available since 2010), Hansberry's published writing, and loads of contextual matter, Perry paints a portrait of the playwright (best known for "Raisin in the Sun"), critic, and activist Lorraine Hansberry which allows for a deeper understanding of the person Hansberry, her work, and artistic and political movements she was aligned to. Perry peels back layer after layer while also being transparent about what we cannot know and what might be even unethical to speculate. She hones in on Hansberry's queerness, discussing its importance in regards to her understanding of herself, her politics, her relationships and very deeply her writing too. I loved how Perry understands it to situate Hansberry in a wider context, describe important networks (like Hansberry's friendship with Nina Simone and James Baldwin), and offer interesting analyses of Hanberry's creative Oeuvre. This book portrays Lorraine Hansberry as the complex woman she was - grown up somehow middle-class and then turning wholeheartedly to Communism, a staunch feminist who engaged with the writing of Simone de Beauviour but often centred male characters in her own writing, a lesbian who was part of Daughters of Billitis and who married a white Jewish communist. Through the meticulous reconstruction of Hansberry's life and thoughts, one also gains insights into leftist debates, the Civil Rights Movement, lesbian and queer publishing, and anti-colonial politics of the 1950s and 1960s. Written in assured prose this is a wonderful tribute to Lorraine Hansberry.
Based on archival material (some of which has only been available since 2010), Hansberry's published writing, and loads of contextual matter, Perry paints a portrait of the playwright (best known for "Raisin in the Sun"), critic, and activist Lorraine Hansberry which allows for a deeper understanding of the person Hansberry, her work, and artistic and political movements she was aligned to. Perry peels back layer after layer while also being transparent about what we cannot know and what might be even unethical to speculate. She hones in on Hansberry's queerness, discussing its importance in regards to her understanding of herself, her politics, her relationships and very deeply her writing too. I loved how Perry understands it to situate Hansberry in a wider context, describe important networks (like Hansberry's friendship with Nina Simone and James Baldwin), and offer interesting analyses of Hanberry's creative Oeuvre. This book portrays Lorraine Hansberry as the complex woman she was - grown up somehow middle-class and then turning wholeheartedly to Communism, a staunch feminist who engaged with the writing of Simone de Beauviour but often centred male characters in her own writing, a lesbian who was part of Daughters of Billitis and who married a white Jewish communist. Through the meticulous reconstruction of Hansberry's life and thoughts, one also gains insights into leftist debates, the Civil Rights Movement, lesbian and queer publishing, and anti-colonial politics of the 1950s and 1960s. Written in assured prose this is a wonderful tribute to Lorraine Hansberry.
August 5, 2019
This relatively short biography provides a great deal of information about Lorraine Hansberry's life--the facts of her family and childhood, her activism, her writings, her impact on other writers and artists, her commitment to the black community.
The writing is very good, although despite its length I felt that some sections dragged but overall it presented a powerful and moving portrait of this great writer who is underappreciated. Of course her greatest work, A Raisin in the Sun continues to be performed but Perry's descriptions inspired me to read what sound like fascinating pieces of work. I will read The Sign In Sidney Brustein's Window right away and look for her other works. Though flawed, they sounded interesting and a window into the concerns and themes of this outstanding author.
I would recommend this book not only to people interested in Hansberry but also to those interested in some insights into the history of gay people's struggles, the struggles internationally for equality for black people and the defeat of imperialism, as well as the creative process.
Perry is deeply admiring of Hansberry's work. While that may in some way bias her point of view, it also allows for a special insight into Hansberry's life and oeuvre.
I found this book to be both important and interesting. It's one of those books I'm particularly glad to have read.
The writing is very good, although despite its length I felt that some sections dragged but overall it presented a powerful and moving portrait of this great writer who is underappreciated. Of course her greatest work, A Raisin in the Sun continues to be performed but Perry's descriptions inspired me to read what sound like fascinating pieces of work. I will read The Sign In Sidney Brustein's Window right away and look for her other works. Though flawed, they sounded interesting and a window into the concerns and themes of this outstanding author.
I would recommend this book not only to people interested in Hansberry but also to those interested in some insights into the history of gay people's struggles, the struggles internationally for equality for black people and the defeat of imperialism, as well as the creative process.
Perry is deeply admiring of Hansberry's work. While that may in some way bias her point of view, it also allows for a special insight into Hansberry's life and oeuvre.
I found this book to be both important and interesting. It's one of those books I'm particularly glad to have read.
April 25, 2019
Welp I finished this book with tears in my eyes but what else is new. Imani Perry is such a tender and ambitious writer and thinker. I left this book with deep impressions about Lorraine’s work, her politics, her loneliness, friendships...the fact that her body failed her at such a young age devastated me even though I knew it was coming. That’s a testament to Imani’s writing. I recommend this to anyone interested in Hansberry specifically, or black art, black queerness generally.
April 23, 2019
2019 PEN biography prize, recommended 5books.com
Dry, could have been faster-paced
academic - too much literary criticism and I don’t like the author using her subjects fictional writing as a source for interpreting her personality, values and motives
I like biographies of writers but I am less interested in biographies of activists. Don’t know why
Dry, could have been faster-paced
academic - too much literary criticism and I don’t like the author using her subjects fictional writing as a source for interpreting her personality, values and motives
I like biographies of writers but I am less interested in biographies of activists. Don’t know why
did-not-finish
February 26, 2019I’m not sure how to divvy up the blame between the author and the audio narrator, but this was just mind numbingly boring despite its biographical subject herself being so important and so darn interesting! I woke up at the 33% mark long enough to bail.
March 23, 2019
I loved reading this book!
Though Lorraine Hansberry has passed, her impressive spirit (and leadership) is still waiting for us to catch up.
Though Lorraine Hansberry has passed, her impressive spirit (and leadership) is still waiting for us to catch up.
March 2, 2023
Imani Perry’s amazing bio of Lorraine Hansberry is 5 stars+. I can’t sing enough praise for it. Known exclusively for being the author of A Raisin in the Sun which opened in March of 1959 and was the first play on Broadway by a black person, she was also a fierce radical and a lesbian. Imani Perry recounts details and brings forth information about Lorraine that was held in secret for 50 years by Nemeroff her ex husband and later friend. Both her leftist, communist activity and her love of women could be reasons why she did not achieve the fame that she should have. Her friends James Baldwin and Nina Simone were able to.
I was so impressed with Imani Perry’s care and regard of Lorraine, the love and appreciation she has for her subject comes through. One of my favorite chapters American Radical uplifts radicalism to a level I’ve never encountered before. To Lorraine’s level, who said about a meeting of activists she wished she could “find some way with these dialogues to show and encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an American radical.”
There is so much more I can write about. I highly recommend Looking for Lorraine. Imani Perry’s style makes it very accessible. It is not scholarly but it could be said slightly or unobtrusively personal. The few times she comes into the book give us a wonderful connection This is a special mark of Imani Perry. You will see it in South to America where she is even more present. I love that about this book. I am so glad to know Lorraine Hansberry better.
I was so impressed with Imani Perry’s care and regard of Lorraine, the love and appreciation she has for her subject comes through. One of my favorite chapters American Radical uplifts radicalism to a level I’ve never encountered before. To Lorraine’s level, who said about a meeting of activists she wished she could “find some way with these dialogues to show and encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an American radical.”
There is so much more I can write about. I highly recommend Looking for Lorraine. Imani Perry’s style makes it very accessible. It is not scholarly but it could be said slightly or unobtrusively personal. The few times she comes into the book give us a wonderful connection This is a special mark of Imani Perry. You will see it in South to America where she is even more present. I love that about this book. I am so glad to know Lorraine Hansberry better.
August 7, 2021
So many incredible gems in this book. Lorraine Hansberry was a highly principled communist, lesbian, and cultural worker devoted to the black liberation struggle. Her dialogues with people such as Nina Simone, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and others are truly mind-altering to read. May we use Lorraine Hansberry’s tools to continue the construction of the society she spent her entirely too short life building.
February 15, 2021
A shorter biography of Lorraine Hansberry. Perry approaches her subject with a palpable sense of care. You really leave the book with a powerful sense of how deeply Hansberry was loved, not as an icon but as a courageous and complicated figure at the vanguard of her time.
Want to read
January 27, 2022
July 2, 2019
I can't say more lovely things about this book than what I am able to muster tonight as I write this review. I am not one much for memoirs but recently have taken a liking for them. Somewhat coincidentally, another memoir that I've recently enjoyed is Negroland which, like Looking for Lorraine, deals with the subjects of class, race and gender of the Chicago bourgeois. The point is, I did not know how I would actually like this book although I both adore Professor Perry and Lorraine Hansberry. As a combination it worked fantastically and I am so glad I took the time to read this.
Perry's pen is fastidious, intimate and dare I say bold. At times she melds the story of Lorraine with her own. The story of this amazing Black American woman is best told and understood within her deep geographic, temporal and racial contexts which Perry is intimately aware of due to her own background. There are the ways in which Perry describes Perry's homeland of Chicago, a mecca for Black Americans who migrated from the South to the North and have a significant key role to play in the larger African diaspora. There is of course Lorraine's relationship with her father and her middle class upbringing, which Perry handles with care and nuances -- Lorraine is not perfect but she was also aware of her upbringing which is saying far more than most can. And while one may know a bit about Lorraine's relationship with her famous father, Perry makes sure to detail the ways that she also looked up to her mother, who often had to protect her children against the racist mobs of white Chicagoans during the Hansberry's attempts to integrate. And this is all just in the beginning. Perry takes the reader through the life of Lorraine, moving forward with an intimate grace one may usually see in novels. What is great about this book is that although the book looms with Lorraine's untimely death, Looking for Lorraine is not a tragedy in the classical sense. That is, often tragedies hold out the untimely passing of the main figure for the purposes of suspense but clearly Perry cares enough about Lorraine to use her death to spotlight her work; to showcase that despite Lorraine's death, she accomplished so much and undoubtedly wanted to accomplish so much more. It is important to note that Perry dedicates an entire chapter to Lorraine's sexuality. Lorraine identified as a lesbian and what this book in some ways does is further help Lorraine enter the schema of a true LGBTQ trailblazer in ways that she may not have been able to fully do so in life (due to her untimely death, I imagine). I really liked the ways that Perry highlighted a common strand between Lorraine, Baldwin and Nina all of whom were in Perry’s words “queer” and all of whom were friends and loners. Somehow this all makes sense but it's important to acknowledge that those who many consider icons had quite a bit in common in terms of sexuality and even mental health. Perhaps my favorite aspect of this book is how Perry handles Lorraine's radicality. Lorraine was a remarkably radical figure, albeit sometimes misunderstood by famous radicals like Amiri Baraka as holding the same politics as those who came from similar class backgrounds. Lorraine was a socialist, who supported the causes of nations in Latin America, Africa, the United States, and Asia who wanted self-determination and anti-capitalism. Perry reminds us throughout who Lorraine was and that her art -from A Raisin in the Sun to Les Blancs- is infused with her passion for anti colonialism, socialism, and liberation overall. It is a great loss to have lost Lorraine but in looking for her, Perry has contributed a great treasure towards her legacy.
Perry's pen is fastidious, intimate and dare I say bold. At times she melds the story of Lorraine with her own. The story of this amazing Black American woman is best told and understood within her deep geographic, temporal and racial contexts which Perry is intimately aware of due to her own background. There are the ways in which Perry describes Perry's homeland of Chicago, a mecca for Black Americans who migrated from the South to the North and have a significant key role to play in the larger African diaspora. There is of course Lorraine's relationship with her father and her middle class upbringing, which Perry handles with care and nuances -- Lorraine is not perfect but she was also aware of her upbringing which is saying far more than most can. And while one may know a bit about Lorraine's relationship with her famous father, Perry makes sure to detail the ways that she also looked up to her mother, who often had to protect her children against the racist mobs of white Chicagoans during the Hansberry's attempts to integrate. And this is all just in the beginning. Perry takes the reader through the life of Lorraine, moving forward with an intimate grace one may usually see in novels. What is great about this book is that although the book looms with Lorraine's untimely death, Looking for Lorraine is not a tragedy in the classical sense. That is, often tragedies hold out the untimely passing of the main figure for the purposes of suspense but clearly Perry cares enough about Lorraine to use her death to spotlight her work; to showcase that despite Lorraine's death, she accomplished so much and undoubtedly wanted to accomplish so much more. It is important to note that Perry dedicates an entire chapter to Lorraine's sexuality. Lorraine identified as a lesbian and what this book in some ways does is further help Lorraine enter the schema of a true LGBTQ trailblazer in ways that she may not have been able to fully do so in life (due to her untimely death, I imagine). I really liked the ways that Perry highlighted a common strand between Lorraine, Baldwin and Nina all of whom were in Perry’s words “queer” and all of whom were friends and loners. Somehow this all makes sense but it's important to acknowledge that those who many consider icons had quite a bit in common in terms of sexuality and even mental health. Perhaps my favorite aspect of this book is how Perry handles Lorraine's radicality. Lorraine was a remarkably radical figure, albeit sometimes misunderstood by famous radicals like Amiri Baraka as holding the same politics as those who came from similar class backgrounds. Lorraine was a socialist, who supported the causes of nations in Latin America, Africa, the United States, and Asia who wanted self-determination and anti-capitalism. Perry reminds us throughout who Lorraine was and that her art -from A Raisin in the Sun to Les Blancs- is infused with her passion for anti colonialism, socialism, and liberation overall. It is a great loss to have lost Lorraine but in looking for her, Perry has contributed a great treasure towards her legacy.
November 19, 2020
Reading Looking For Lorraine I was able to learn of a life that is rarely discussed in full. So many of us read A Raisin In The Sun in a high school or college course. We've seen the '89 film, or were introduced to it watching the '08 adaptation starring Phylicia Rashad and Diddy. But never were informed of Hansberry's radical politics, let alone her queerness.
I often imagine what our Black queer literary ancestors would think of our current world. The ability to truly be 'out' in the 21st century. If they were still living, what works would be crafted from the tips of their pens? What insight would be spoken from their lips? What would they say of the progress (or lack thereof)?
I felt an array of feelings learning that she was mentored by DuBois, her work with the Community Party, her queer writings under a pen name, her lovers, her struggles, her fears, and the hole that was left by her death - devastating her close friends Nina Simone and James Baldwin. She was so much more than A Raisin in the Sun (a work that is also much more than what people give it). Her mind influenced writers, activists, musicians, and politicians. Imani Perry does a masterful job at conveying the complexities of the life of Lorraine Hansberry, while handling her legacy, and the stories told by those that loved her with care. A powerful life, cut much too short. Following Baldwin's words, "I think we must resolve not to fail her, for she did not fail us." Her story must be told.
I often imagine what our Black queer literary ancestors would think of our current world. The ability to truly be 'out' in the 21st century. If they were still living, what works would be crafted from the tips of their pens? What insight would be spoken from their lips? What would they say of the progress (or lack thereof)?
I felt an array of feelings learning that she was mentored by DuBois, her work with the Community Party, her queer writings under a pen name, her lovers, her struggles, her fears, and the hole that was left by her death - devastating her close friends Nina Simone and James Baldwin. She was so much more than A Raisin in the Sun (a work that is also much more than what people give it). Her mind influenced writers, activists, musicians, and politicians. Imani Perry does a masterful job at conveying the complexities of the life of Lorraine Hansberry, while handling her legacy, and the stories told by those that loved her with care. A powerful life, cut much too short. Following Baldwin's words, "I think we must resolve not to fail her, for she did not fail us." Her story must be told.
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