17:120 Lorraine Hansberry: Award Winning Playwright and Civil Rights Activist by Susan Sinott

In 1959, in just her late 20s, Lorraine Hansberry was finally able to get the play out of her head and onto paper and A Raisin in the Sun was born.  It had been rattling around in her head for a while but once it found its time and place, it took off and took America with it.  Lorraine had grown up fairly middle-class in Chicago, or as middle-class as a black family was to be, to parents who were in at the beginning of the Civil Rights movement.  She learned much watching them that did not truly germinate until she was a young woman and able to truly appreciate what they had done and what her generation still needed to do.  A Raisin in the Sun allowed her to start finding her outer voice although it seems a shame that so much of its message went askew at the time. It is a shame that she died so young with so much left to give to society.

I admit, before this year I had heard of this play but had never seen it or had any idea even what it was about.  I didn't know the name Lorraine Hansberry.  My 10th grader is doing theater and needed to do a biographical research paper so we decided to combine the assignments and do it on a playwright and Ms. Hansberry had been coming up a lot in the standards and his theater curriculum so I suggested her because I did not want to deal with yet another Shakespeare thing (don't get me wrong, I enjoy Shakespeare but researching him is so overdone and I wanted to learn about someone new).  He agreed and this book was the source of most of his information.  It was very informative, simply-written but engaging at the same time.  I'm definitely glad to have learned more about her.


Page count: 147p/3,790p ytd/278,265p lifetime

9:120 A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

More money than the Younger family has ever imagined is due to come any day due to the passing of their patriarch.  Now the decisions of how to use it to their best advantage are being fought about with Mama wanting to use it as a down payment on a real house in a suburb and some for her daughter's college as she dreams to be a doctor but her son wants to use it all on to go in with friends for a liquor store.  His dreams and his vision of himself are as low as can be but things are about to change for the family...

A timeless story of a middle class family who struggles to make ends meet let alone try to better their situation for their children.  It's easy to understand their hopes and dreams and frustrations.  What can not be understated is the fact that this is a black family in Chicago during extreme racial segregation and prejudice. The thought of Benethea, becoming a doctor seems like a pipe dream to Walter Lee, the son. He is a chauffer for a well-to-do white man while Ruth, his wife, cleans houses and works in kitchens.  This play focuses really on Walter's despair at this place in life but in the end there is a glimmer of hope that we all need to keep going and you have to hope that things will turn out well for this family.


Page count: 151p/2,122p ytd/276,597p lifetime