Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

The Life of Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine Hansberry was the very first black female writer to receive the Circle Award for best play in 1959, while also being the youngest American player playwright to usher a new era of Theatre in the United States. Hansberry was born and raised in the state of Chicago where she faced countless amounts of racial discrimination. In which she later managed to overcome all odds and used it as fuel to her plays. (CBB) Hansberry faced more downs than ups with having to deal with racial discrimination, segregation and having first hand experiences on what it was like to be black. During the racial tensions at that period of time Hansberry made the most of it by using it as encouragement while her love for theater
began to grow. Hansberry learned to find dignity through her youth days, while it helped build and strengthen her ability to write captivating plays.

Hansberry’s childhood was not all shiny and gold, when she was at the age of eight years old she had firsthand experience on what it was like to be a person of color. Her sister Mamie, both bear witness to the cold reality on what is was like to be a colored folk in that period of time. With Mamie and her having to flee away from a mob of angry white males who were set out for a motive to injure both sisters. They made way to the living when a brick was thrown directly towards their path but crashed through a front window and lodged into an opposite wall. Hansberry was very close to having a close encounter with the brick and could have led to major injuries, if not death. When the incident took place the police showed little or no interest on what had happen, but still captured the attention of blacks outside of town. The brick incident is just the minimal things she had to go through. As had to witness her mother up at night armed with a firearm, while also dealing with many incidents at school, and having watching her father depart away in Washington. The hardship Hansberry went through definitely had an impact on the way she perceived life. It gave Hansberry a much different view on the struggles of a colored folk. She made sure it did not discourage her to achieve what she had always set her mind to, which was to become a writer. Hansberry parents resided at South Park Way, which was later turned into a facility for distinguished African-American intellectual and artists. The visitors who played an essential role on her career path were W.E.B. Du Bois, an American sociologist, and a well-known singer named Paul Robeson. “Hansberry’s mother ensured that her children were in touch with their roots:” as she took always took her to visit her grandmother in Tennessee.” (CBB) During those time Hansberry spent at her grandmothers’ she heard all kinds of stories but the one that resonated through her was how her grandfather had to escape and hide from a hill where he was owned by a slave master. Hansberry’s father was able to keep up an active and ambitious lifestyle despite the struggles he had to go through, as he was quite successful in the business aspect of things, but his political run for U.S. Congress was unsuccessful. Hansberry’s work ethic and the motivation to strive for whatever she chooses to do highly influenced from her father. Hansberry’s goal and ambition was to attend the Howard University, or University of Wisconsin while in elementary school. In which she then later attended the University of Wisconsin. (CBB)

Hansberry had been working on three uncompleted plays and an unfinished semiautobiographical novel before she began working on A Raisin in the Sun.
It was her first ever completed work. Hansberry’s writings had a unique taste to it, as she always channeled her anger to a lot of her writings. While Hansberry and her husband Nemiroff were entertaining their friends, Burt D’Lugoff and Philip Rose found the play intriguing and made an offer to produce the play on Broadway. The play of A Raisin in the Sun was like no other at that period time, the story behind it was about a black family living in the slums of Chicago. They were left to figure out how to spend the ten thousand dollars, as each family member were having difficulties on what to do with the money received. The characters in the play were, Walter Lee who works as a chauffeur, his wife Ruth who occasionally works as a maid, and their ten-year-old son Travis. During the well fought out debate on what to do with the money, it was later taken away from them, which left them with nothing, which only made matters worse. The whole family members went through hardships and struggles, yet they still realized that they would still have to struggle even if the money was still at their reach. However they still managed to love each other despite their
weakness.
The title A Raisin in the Sun derived from a poem called “Harlem” written by Langston Hughes in 1951, which reads: What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore—And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crusty and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

A Raisin in the Sun gained an all-round success across the country and later made it to a Broadway debut on March 11, 1959 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. In June of that year Hansberry earned a title of the “most promising playwright” of the season. A Raisin in the Sun would later become the longest- running black play in Broadway’s history. The reason behind the plays success and popularity was because it explored a “universal theme—the search for freedom and a better life.” The play’s original run on Broadway lasted for nineteen months and a total of 530 performances. Hansberry then sold the movie rights of A Raisin in the Sun to Columbia Pictures, a few years later she wrote two more screenplays which involved some provocative new scenes that highlighted the problems African-Americans faced during that period of time but was later declined by Columbia. (AAYA)