Lorraine Hansberry and A Raisin in the Sun

Dr. GoodArleta High SchoolEnglish 10

Lorraine Hansberry•Born May 19, 1930 in Chicago

•Grew up in Southside Chicago, youngest of 4 children

•Mother and father were intellectuals/activists

•Hansberry vs. Lee—antisegregation case about fair and equal housing, Hansberry won (basis for parts of A Raisin in the Sun)

•Attended University of Wisconsin/Art Institute of Chicago

•Moved to New York to pursue writing career

•Wrote the first drama written by an African American woman and produced on Broadway, age 29

•Died at the age of 35, cancer

•To Be Young, Gifted, and Black published after her death

A Raisin in the Sun

•Hansberry raised money to produce the play in 1959

•First play produced on Broadway that was written by an African-American woman

•Won New York Drama Critics Circle Award

•Set in Southside Chicago, after World War II

•The story of the Younger family, and their quest for a better life

Symbolic Representations

“I was born on the Southside of Chicago.  I was born black and a female.  I was born in a depression after one world war, and came into adolescence during another. While I was still in my teens the first atom bombs were dropped on human beings at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and by the time I was twenty-three years old my government and that of the Soviet Union had entered actively into the worst conflict of nerves in human history: the Cold War.”

Excerpts from To Be Young, Gifted, and

Black

“I have given you this account so that you know that what I write is not based on the assumption of idyllic possibilities or innocent assessments of the true nature of life but, rather, my own personal view that, posing one against the other, I think that the human race does command its own destiny, and that that destiny can eventually embrace the stars.”

South Side Chicago: 1950s

Lorraine Hansberry’s house in South Side Chicago—as a child she moved with her family into an all-white neighborhood and the prejudice she experienced factors into elements of A Raisin in the Sun

Sets and Characters

Nigerian Robes

OCOMOGOSIAY!