Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965)

Walter Younger is a man who cannot accept the place society forced on him: as a chauffeur to a wealthy white man, he is constantly thinking about his plan to starting his own business. As _A Raisin in the Sun_ unfolds, you cannot help but think that Walter is a tragic figure, his flaw being his willingness to sacrifice his family's happiness on the altar of his own ambition. Walter's sister, Bennie, is torn between two men - the wealthy George and the Nigerian scholar Asagai. Walter's mother must decide how to spend the insurance money that she receives from her husband's death. The play does not have a typically tragic ending , but you get the sense that the Younger family's struggles are just beginning.… (mehr)

Though I knew it, until reading [b:A Raisin in the Sun|5517|A Raisin in the Sun|Lorraine Hansberry|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1165522672s/5517.jpg|3154525] I had never contemplated the idea that nearly every African American lives with the identity of slaves as their ancestors. They live on this quarter of the world because someone wanted to own their family generations ago. I can do no more than imagine it yet I assume that's an incredibly disquieting reality.

[b:A Raisin in the Sun|5517|A Raisin in the Sun|Lorraine Hansberry|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1165522672s/5517.jpg|3154525] presents a different kind of disquieting reality, full of identity and history and dreams and squandered ambitions and open future and hope. It's distinctly black, distinctly Chicago, and distinctly poor, yet the dreams and hopes are universal and the characters ubiquitous (read, human). After the Younger family is given $10,000 (about $82,000 in 2016 dollars), they have to decide the best way to use it to build a better life. As a black family living at the cusp of civil rights, where can they go and what can they do yet still be accepted? Does that matter? Do they live as blacks unapologetically and with dignity? Or do they sacrifice dreams and dignity in the face of a culture that refuses them their humanity?

I loved this play. I read it but I'd also love to see it performed. [a:Lorraine Hansberry|3732|Lorraine Hansberry|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1234149147p2/3732.jpg] was but 29 when she wrote this; a young gifted black woman in a culture that had continually rejected her for at least those three reasons. Yet, in her own dignity, she overcame. Her battles continue to be fought daily. The best end I can give here is her words on artistry and the cultural impact that artistry has:

I am a writer. I suppose I think that the highest gift that man has is art, and I am audacious enough to think of myself as an artist - that there is both joy and beauty and illumination and communion between people to be achieved through the dissection of personality. That's what I want to do. I want to reach a little closer to the world, which is to say people, and see if we can share some illuminations together about each other.

Lines I liked from the play:

- "You never understood that there is more than one kind of feeling which can exist between a man and a woman - or at least - there should be."
"No - between a man and a woman there need be only one kind of feeling. I have that for you - Now even - right this moment -"
"I know - and by itself - it won't do. I can find that anywhere."
"For a woman it should be enough."
"I know - because that's what it says in all the novels that men write. But it isn't."
- "I want so many things... I want so many things that they are driving me crazy. Sometimes it's like I can see the future stretched out in front of me - just plain as day. The future, Mama. Hanging over there at the edge of my days. Just waiting for me - a big, looming blank space - full of nothing. Just waiting for me. But it don't have to be."
- Then isn't there something wrong in a house - in a world - where all dreams, good or bad, must depend on the death of a man?"
- "Just sit a while and think - Never be afraid to sit a while and think."
- "There is always something left to love. If you ain't learned that you ain't learned nothing. [...] Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most - when they when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well, that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so… When you starts measuring somebody - measure him right, child. Measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is."
- ...above all [Negros] have among our miserable and downtrodden ranks people who are the very essence of human dignity.
- …I think that the human race does not command its own destiny and that that destiny can eventually embrace the stars…
- I have treated Mr. Lindner as a human merely because he is one; that does not make the meaning of his call less malignant, less sick.
- ...attention must be paid in equal and careful measure to the frequent triumph of man, if not nature, over the absurd. Perhaps it is here that certain of the modern existentialists have erred. They have seemed to me to be overwhelmed by the mere fact of the absurd and become incapable of imagining its frailty.… (mehr)