Lorraine HansberryRezensionen

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.

Classic American play that everyone should read at some point in their life. I have been blessed to read it multiple times and will be seeing the video versions very soon. Sidney Poitier is always my favorite Walter!

I loved this story, my first play book that I read. So much humanity in this book, the good, the ugly, and how to keep dreaming despite the hardships and awful truth of reality, at times. The characters were great and became a part of me. Looking forward to seeing this as a real life play someday.

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.

We’ll written play. My sons freshman class had this for their summer reading list. Curious how they all thought of it.

Incredibly well-crafted, the arc of the plot, dialogue as natural as any real-life conversation and scenes set with such vivid attention to detail, character, and emotion, that even though this is a screenplay it reads as satisfyingly as a novel.

There are some spoilers in the introduction/commentary section of the book so you might want to jump ahead to the screenplay first but make sure you go back afterwards as it is both informative and infuriating to read about why this superior screenplay wasn’t used, not that the Sidney Poitier movie wasn’t perfectly fine but when you read this version you realize it could have been even better.

Every bit as relevant now as when it was first performed in 1959.

Lorraine Hansberry’s second play, ‘The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,’ is much less well known than her first, the absolutely fantastic ‘A Raisin in the Sun,’ but it shows flashes of the same brilliance. It centers on Sidney Brustein, a married man in New York who’s had one business fail at the play’s opening and then plunges himself into another, a politically progressive newspaper. With his marriage going a little stale, and characters around him who are either cynical, in denial, or beaten down by life, he wrestles with making a difference in the world, and the idea of getting away from it all to lead a more authentic and pure existence. Interestingly, it’s compared at one point to the difference between the Thoreau of ‘Civil Disobedience’ and the Thoreau of ‘Walden.’

I love how Hansberry filled the work with cultural and literary references, and how balanced she was in presenting ideas from a diverse character set, including a gay playwright and black communist. The play strikes a balanced tone and an enlightened wisdom about the complexity of living in the modern world, most notably, how it’s possible to continue to be an optimist in spite of it all. The arc the main character goes through leads to a lovely, powerful ending, one that still resonates today amidst our own troubled times. Where the play fell a little short for me was in its other subplots, which didn’t seem that well integrated. It felt a little messy, maybe because life is messy, but for the purposes of a performance, it could have done with a tighter story. It’s still worth seeking out, and a poignant reminder of just how tragic it was that Hansberry died far too young at 34, with so much ahead of her.

Quotes:
On apathy:
“You see! There it is, man! We are confronted with the great disease of the modern bourgeois intellectual: ostrich-ism. I’ve been watching it happen to this one; the great sad withdrawal from the affairs of men.”

On capitalism:
Iris: “I just don’t have it. They say if you really have it – you stick with it no matter what – and that – that you’ll do anything-“
Sidney: “That is one of the great romantic and cruel ideas of our civilization. A lot of people ‘have it’ and they just get trampled to death by the mob trying to get up the same mountain.”

On confronting the problems of the world:
“In the ancient times, the good men among my ancestors, when they heard of evil, strapped a sword to their loins and strode into the desert; and when they found it, they cut it down – or were cut down and bloodied the earth with purifying death. But how does one confront these nameless faceless vapors that are the evil of our time?”

On divorce:
“Of course I decided against it. A divorce? For what? Because a marriage was violated? Ha! We’ve got three boys and their father is devoted to them; I guess he’s devoted to all four of his boys. And what would I do? There was no rush years ago at home to marry Mavis Parodus; there was just Fred then. In this world there are two kinds of loneliness and it is given to each of us to pick. I picked.”

On nature:
“Coming here makes me believe that the planet is mine again. In the primeval sense. Man and earth and earth and man and all that. You know. That we have just been born, the earth and me, and are just starting out. There is no pollution, no hurt; just me and this ball of minerals and gasses suddenly shot together out of the cosmos.”

On optimism in creating change; I love this one:
Wally: “You really are a fool.”
Sidney: “Always have been. (His eyes find his wife’s) A fool who believes that death is waste and love is sweet and that the earth turns and men change every day and that rivers run and that people wanna be better than they are and that flowers smell good and that I hurt terribly today, and that hurt is desperation and desperation is – energy and energy can move things…”½

No wonder this is seen as great writing! Read it for the summer series in the Progressive Class at FUMC-Evanston. Marcie is to lead the class.

As part of my Directing class in school, I've had to some plays in preparation for the scene work that's to come later in the semester. One of those plays was Lorraine Hansberry's classic A Raisin in the Sun.

First, I want to talk about the positives. A Raisin in the Sun truly is a moving play. It's honestly one of the best examples of how good American theatre can be. It's expertly paced, each act ending with a crescendo that begs the audience to come back after the intermission. The characters are well-written, if frequently unlikable - though that's sort of the point. These are all flawed characters and I appreciate just how well developed each of them is. It's interesting how even though this play was written and set in the 1960s, its subject matter is still so relevant and applicable to today's society. If you didn't know any better, this play could've been written and been placed in 2017. This play has won countless awards over the years, and it definitely deserves it. It truly is an amazing play, regardless of the issues with the script I'm about to talk about.

I have a feeling that this play is one that's much better seen than read. Like I said, it's truly a good play, but the actual script itself leaves something to be desired. There's something so daunting and annoying about a script that has to spell every action out in its stage directions. At no point do I as a reader of plays, or a theatrical artist, need to know every little movement the characters do (and have their reasoning spelled out for me) or have every minute detail of the set told to me. Some of that should be left for the production team of every production to decide (as is the case anyway since frequently, directors ignore stage directions in scripts even if there are barely any, to begin with). I recognize that this may just be a personal preference of mine as a Theatre artist and playwright, but it's just a pet peeve of mine when it comes to some scripts. This seems to be a thing that many modern plays have moved away from doing, thankfully. As a result, the scripts of many a classic play are bogged down with unnessecary stage direction.

For me, if the stage directions were just edited down to the bare necessities for a reader to understand the action instead of the endless, constant interruptions describing the minute details of the set and the meaning behind every action - as though the reader, actor, and director can't make those inferences without it being spelled out for them, then this script would be a lot better. I think it's probably unfair to judge this play by its script. If this were a novel, the amount of detail in the descriptions would be great. As a script, it detracts from the experience of reading it. Watching it, however, probably rectifies those problems since the action doesn't stop to explain the set or detail the actions that a viewer can plainly see. My issues with the script boil down to how the detailed stage directions take away from the momentum of the story since the dialogue is what thrusts the story forward and every time you have to stop to read a paragraph of stage directions kills that momentum. But watching a play is different since the stage directions are just acted out. The momentum is there because all the action is happening while the lines are being said instead of having to be read in between lines.

All in all, it's a brilliant play with a script that's a drag to read but, most likely, a true delight to actually see performed. I won't know for sure until I see the production of it that is happening here in Greensboro later this spring, but I suspect seeing the play will highlight all the truly good aspects of it. Such is the case for many a play with a script full of too much stage direction. As a result of my displeasure with the script itself, I'd recommend seeing a performance of A Raisin in the Sun rather than reading the script, but if you have no choice, the script will do. It's a good, enjoyable, and important story that's worth experiencing in whatever way you can experience it in.

(3.5 out of 5 stars)

Reading a play is never as good as going to see a play. My rating is what I anticipate my reaction would be to a decent production of it. I can see the intensity, desperation, and inspiration in the script even if I didn't feel it as much as I would have with a fleshed-out novel or with actors sharing that emotion with me as an audience member. It is deservedly a classic and still far too accurate.

Although I've read a bit of 20th-century drama, I had managed never to read this pillar of the genre. It's quite good -- funny, joyful, solemn, and sorrowful -- and certainly remains relevant.

hated the book. The play I watched of it was decent though, so I would just go watch that if you can.

The book starts out with introducing the characters. Ruth is Walter Lee’s wife, Travis is his son Beneatha is his sister, and Lena (Mama) is his mother. The beginning of the story says that Lena inherited ten thousand dollars from her husband, Beneatha wants to be a doctor and Walter wants to invest in liquor. It is revealed in the story that Ruth is pregnant. Beneatha is trying to find her ancestry with the help of someone named Asagai. In the book, Lena buys a house, Linder tries to buy it from her so they wouldn’t live in that neighborhood. Wily, who Walter invested in, runs off with the leftover money, some of which was supposed to go to Beneatha’s doctor education. In the book, Asagai asks her to move to Africa with him and be a doctor there. Although Walter plans to sell the house to pay everyone back, he instead stands his ground when Linder comes and doesn’t sell their house. The book ends with the moving crew loading their stuff to bring to their new house.

My opinion: I did get confused in some parts because of the way they spoke, but it did add to the story because thats how people spoke back then. I really like how the story reflects the poem, as in Walter's dream in running his business starts to defer. I like how Ruth loves Walter through the whole book even though some parts weren’t the greatest showing him. Travis is one of the best characters I think because he isn’t worrying about money or complaining about their living space, he's just sorta cool with where he is. The details for the set is effective, helps to put setting in my mind. I also loved the description of the characters, it didn't really paint them physically but it said things like "beautiful" expecting the reader to picture their version of it. I found the story a bit boring though, with sudden exciting bring-ups. Toward the end, when Walter is going to sell their new house, you could just hear him changing his mind (probably because of Travis's presence) and when you read that Wily ran away with the money is where I started to actually captivated by it.

Well, I can honestly say that I enjoyed the book tremendously!

My favorite version of the play was with Sidney Poitier, so, while reading, that's the cast I kept picturing (as I could best remember them all).

Throughout the play, and the book, the one person that really agitated me most, was Walter Lee. In the first two acts, Walter Lee was bothersome, annoying, just plain disrespectful and stupid. But by act three, he totally redeemed himself and proved that he is the wonderful, father, son, and brother you had hoped him to be.

My favorite character of the whole book and play has always been Mama. Her wisdom, her love and her working so hard to keep the family together and happy. I adore that about her.

I liked Ruth because she stuck by Walter Lee through everything..even when he was being the jerk. She loved him and you knew it, even in her disappointment.

I liked Beneatha, she was smart and always thinking. She could be a bit preachy sometimes but I think many times, she meant well. She stood up to her brother and was just as stubborn and bullheaded as he was. And I liked that she thought for herself during a time that it was thought that women should just get married, have babies and do "woman's work"..She tried to step outside that box and do her own thing!

This will be a book that will be bought and put on my bookshelf as soon as possible and one classic that I will always love!

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As I was typing my initial review, and got to my last few words, my Kindle shuts down...It was so much better written than what I can do now because I was going by how I felt then and once it was done, I had forgotten a lot of what I said...Sigh

It’s an absolute shame that Lorraine Hansberry died so young at 34. She was so intelligent and insightful, and as these last plays of hers show, quite a playwright. There are three plays in this collection, with substantial background and contextual material, and I’ll comment on each.

Les Blancs – finished by her ex-husband after she passed away, this play deals with colonialism in Africa. While it made people uncomfortable or delighted when it was first performed (often depending on their race, or at least, their political views), I found it quite balanced. She gives us African characters who are simmering with resentfulness for the exploitation their continent endured for centuries, but she also gives us one who left to travel and get educated in Europe, as well as another who converted to Christianity and sees the missionary’s perspective. She gives us Caucasian characters who are condescending and who thinly veil their racism, but she also gives us those who did charitable work for years, and one who seems to want to engage in dialogue. Hansberry had a knack for putting her finger right on the nub of issues, and it’s through this range of characters that she reveals racial and power dynamics. This passage was fantastic:

“I do not ‘hate’ all white men – but I desperately wish that I did. It would make everything infinitely easier! But I am afraid that, among other things, I have seen the slums of Liverpool and Dublin and the caves above Naples. I have seen Dachau and Anne Frank’s attic in Amsterdam. I have seen too many raw-knuckled Frenchmen coming out of the Metro at dawn and too many hungry Italian children to believe that those who raided Africa for three centuries ever ‘loved’ the white race either. I would like to be simple-minded for you, but … I cannot. I have … seen.”

You see in this comment the universality behind what seems to be a specific context. Additionally, while the play is set in Africa, the link to America is clear, especially when one character points out that the American South was itself an apartheid system, and then asks:

“And just why should we be able to ‘talk’ so easily? What is this marvelous nonsense with you Americans? For a handshake, a grin, a cigarette and half a glass of whiskey you want three hundred years to disappear – and in five minutes! Do you really think the rape of a continent dissolves in cigarette smoke?”

Later one of the white doctors makes this point: “They [the courts] are not ideal, if that is what you mean. But I expect our standards of jurisprudence in matters of race will compare favorably with America’s any day!”

It’s a play with a viewpoint to be clear, stating that those in power will never voluntarily give it up unless forced to in the quote by Frederick Douglass in the preface (which I extract below), and in the comment a white character makes towards the end that Africa needs warriors, because “a line goes on into infinity unless it is bisected.” Plays with viewpoints are likely to challenge or provoke us, and this one does that, and in very good ways. (4 stars)

The Drinking Gourd – this play was written originally on commission for a television event to honor the centennial of the Civil War, one that was ultimately cancelled as network executives feared offending Southern viewers and going near the powder keg of race issues that Americans had still not confronted (and haven’t fully to this day). I was blown away by how good this one was. Meticulously researched, Hansberry doesn’t simplistically give us just the physical cruelty of slavery, she also reveals the economic realities of life in the South, and engages in the psychology of all of her characters, black and white. She correctly understood that a critical aspect to keeping four million slaves and the system in place was to keep six to seven million poor whites in the mindset of protecting the system, even if it was one that also impoverished them (recognize any parallels to today?)

She doesn’t reduce any of her characters to simple types, and most tellingly, avoids even what may seem like positive African-American character types – for example, the ‘Mammy’ type. What I hadn’t fully appreciated was an aspect of psychology that went into the creation of this tough but sweet and forgiving character type, often by well-intentioned and liberal white writers. It is just so hard to confront the horror of slavery, to stare it completely in the face, and one of the coping mechanisms is to consciously or subconsciously make those who were so cruelly subjected to it somehow different from other people. An outright racist makes them lesser, inferior beings. A well-intentioned person might embrace the idea that these were simple, gentle people, steeped in Christianity, and had a deep wellspring of forgiveness. Either robs them of their humanity, and softens the blow for us today which should not be softened. Hansberry recognized this, and in a critical insight wrote:

“Guilt would to bear too swiftly and painfully if white America were really obliged quite suddenly to think of the Negro quite as he is, that is, simply as a human being. That would raise havoc … White America has to believe not only that the oppression of the Negro is unfortunate (because most of White American does believe that), but something else, to keep its sense of the unfortunate from turning into a sense of outrage … White America has to believe that Blacks are different, and not only so, but that, by the mystique of this difference, they actually profit in certain charming ways which escape the rest of us with all our engrossing complexities.”

The play was eye-opening to me and made me challenge the things I had grown up with and seen, even material that was trying to communicate that slavery and racism are wrong. The background material was also fantastic, and I quote from it extensively below. (4.5 stars)

What Use are Flowers? – This short play is set in a dystopian future where an old man who has been away for decades comes down out of the woods ala Rip van Winkle to find that civilization is gone, and only illiterate, animalistic children remain. It reminded me a little of Jack London’s ‘The Scarlet Plague’, and while the concept is solid and it served as a delivery vehicle for some of Hansberry’s deepest personal convictions about life despite all of its struggles, I just don’t think it was developed as well as it could have been. (3.5 stars)

Summing up - Hansberry was not resigned to despair, a pessimist, or an absurdist, despite all of the evil she had seen in life. In one speech she outlines this, saying “I have, like all of you, on a thousand occasions seen indescribable displays of man’s very real inhumanity to man, and I have come to maturity, as we all must, knowing that greed and malice and indifference to human misery and bigotry and corruption, brutality, and perhaps above all else, ignorance – the prime ancient and persistent enemy of man – abound in this world.”

In spite of all that, she was an optimist, writing so poignantly “I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to reason enough and – I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations.”

She was also an activist, and a fighter, one who fought with her intellect, words, and the unvarnished truth. She believed that honest dialogue would lead to clarity and then ultimately action, preferably peaceful action, but knowing that that wasn’t always possible.

Quotes:
On struggle and progress, from Frederick Douglass, quoted in the preface to Les Blancs:
“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both … Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do that by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.”

On slavery:
“Some scholars have estimated that in the three centuries that the European slave trade flourished, the African continent lost one hundred million of its people. No one, to my knowledge, has ever paid reparations to the descendants of black men; indeed, they have not yet really acknowledged the fact of the crime against humanity which was the conquest of Africa. But then – history has not yet been concluded … has it?”

And in this searing passage from a letter from January 11, 1964:
“But I have long since learned that it is difficult for the American mind to adjust to the realization that the Rhetts and Scarletts were as much monsters as the keepers of Buchenwald – they just dressed more attractively and their accents are softer. (I know I switched tenses.)”

On the Civil War and slavery, which I found far ahead of its time, and something we still see as a problem reaching a melting point today:
“And I am so profoundly interested to realize that in these 100 years since the Civil War very few of our countrymen have really believed that their Federal Union and the defeat of the slavocracy and the negation of slavery as an institution is an admirable fact of American life. So that it is now possible to get enormous books on the Civil War and to go through the back of them and not find the word ‘slavery,’ let alone ‘Negro.’
We’ve been trying very hard – this is what Jimmy and I mean when we speak of guilt – we’ve been trying very hard in America to pretend that this greatest conflict didn’t even have at its base the only thing it had as its base: where person after person will write a book today and insist that slavery was not the issue! You know, they tell you it was the ‘economy’ – as if that economy was not based on slavery. It’s become a great semantic game to try and get this particular blot out of our minds, and people spend volumes discussing the battles of the Civil War, and which army was crossing which river at five minutes to two, and how their swords were hanging, but the slavery issue we have tried to get rid of. To a point that while it has been perfectly popular, admirable, the thing to do – all my life since Gone with the Wind - to write anything you wanted about the slave system and beautiful ladies in big, fat dresses screaming as their houses burned down from the terrible, nasty, awful Yankees…”

Os Youngers são uma família negra da classe trabalhadora com três gerações. Cinco pessoas vivendo em um apartamento apertado. No entanto, sua sorte está prestes a mudar, já que a avó está prestes a receber um grande pagamento de seguro. No entanto, há discordância considerável dentro da família sobre como o dinheiro será gasto, resultando em atrito dentro da família. Drama poderoso e profundo, demora uma eternidade para se expressar - exaustiva e desnecessariamente prolongado. O tema era de rigueur na década de 1960. Mas custa muito a chegar a um porto seguro. Pouco foco e muito à deriva. O pior de tudo são os diálogos , incrivelmente acolchoados. O raciocínio da escritora parece ter sido - por que usar dez palavras quando posso usar cem? Cada diálogo é longo e parece um discurso, o suficiente para fazer com que até Paul Claudel pareça sucinto. Várias vezes pensei - "Puxa vá direto ao ponto!". Com maior brevidade e síntese, teria sido uma ótima peça.

I enjoyed Raisin in the Sun to an extent, the story was good and it had an okay ending, but the characters had the same dimensions, Hansberry could of took the story further and made the characters more complex. It was well written and makes good points about that time era and how blacks were treated and how they worked with it so it's worth reading.

The Younger family can’t seem to catch a break. For years, maybe even decades, they’ve lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the south side of Chicago. The head of the family has recently died, and the insurance money is coming: $10,000, more than any of them have ever had. Will Walter get the business opportunity he’s been hoping for? Will it put Beneatha through college and medical school? Maybe get the little house in the suburbs that Ruth dreams of for her children? Or will it slip away somehow, as so many of their dreams have done?

I’d love to see a live performance of this show someday. It’s powerfully written, but I can only imagine the impact it must have when staged. In any event, I’m glad I finally took the time to read it.

A very strong play: the characters are exquisitely defined; they all have dreams that have been deferred for too long. The play is written with utter conviction; perhaps the model August Wilson followed. Ruth, the mother, trying to understand her husband, raise her child Travis, trying to get by; Beneatha, politically aware and ambitious; Mama, the moral center; and Walter, wanting to live, to live, thinking money will raise him up. Somehow, some way, they will get their house. What is dignity? Sooo well-written.

A play about the hope of the American Dream, race relations, and family, A Raisin in the Sun is a touching tribute to the African-American working class experience. The Youngers are faced with a difficult situation after the passing of the family patriarch and the insurance money he has left behind. Walter, Ruth, Beneatha, Mama and the other characters are well developed and incredibly memorable. You feel for their struggle but have hope for their future. Absolute classic.

Classics deserve to be read. Classic African-American literature deserves to be read outside of February.½

A powerful play about, among other things, the struggle of the oppressed to dream dreams and realize those dreams without losing hope or the self of self.

While some aspects of this play are dated (it was written and first performed in the 1950s), the characters and their relationships still ring true. I have seen the film version with Sidney Poitier a few times and this is one play where the movie is better than the text. I did find the stage directions describing the setting informative and I am glad that I read this but I do feel that I didn't gain much by reading it after having seen the film. That is often the case with plays which are of course meant to be seen rather than read!½

so glad I finally got around to reading this.