Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry Facts

• In college, Lorraine Hansberry had an artistic eye. She took courses in set design and turned her dorm room into an art studio. In 1949 she spent the summer in Mexico studying painting at the University of Guadalajara.

• W. E. B. DuBois served as one of Lorraine Hansberry's mentors. She worked with the prominent figure on the progressive African-American newspaper Freedom. It was published by Paul Robeson (1898-1976) and produced articles about the feminist movement, domestic activism challenging Jim Crow laws, and anti-colonialist struggles from around the globe.

• Hansberry was close friends with American singer, songwriter, and activist Nina Simone (1933-2003). Lorraine Hansberry was Simone's daughter's godmother.

• The song, "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black" (1970) by Nina Simone is about Lorraine Hansberry. The title is inspired by Hansberry's autobiography and references a speech Hansberry gave in 1964, less than a year before her death.

• Lorraine Hansberry joined a lesbian organization named the Daughters of Bilitis (founded in 1955). She submitted pieces, including letters and short stories, to two different queer publications. Hansberry's short story, "The Anticipation of Eve" (1958), features a lesbian protagonist, Ruth, who comes out to her cousin. Hansberry published it in ONE Magazine under the pen name Emily Jones.

Lorraine Hansberry's Plays

Hansberry began writing at an early age, and her interest in drama and theater began in high school. Her first play is recognized as the first play produced on Broadway written by an African-American woman. It was the first time a drama presented an authentic portrayal of African-American life, with characters that were true to life.

Fig. 2 - Early 1900s Harlem was a mecca for the African-American community and served as the social center for the Harlem Renaissance.

A Raisin in the Sun

The play, A Raisin in the Sun, is about an African-American family, the Youngers, recovering from the death of the family's patriarch, Walter Younger. Waiting for his life insurance money, each family member has a plan for how to use the funds. While his widow hopes to use it to buy a house with a yard, Big Walter's surviving daughter wants to use it for college, while Walter Lee Younger, Jr., his son, hopes to become part owner in a liquor store. The drama surfaces issues of racism, family dynamics, and aspirations in life. Hansberry drew inspiration from her own life as a child, real people in her neighborhood, and her own family to create strong and dynamic characters for her drama.

Fig. 3 - A quote from Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun painted on a wall.

The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window

The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window (1965) is Hansberry's second play and the last to be staged on Broadway. It ran for 101 performances and symbolically closed on the night of her death. The play is about a man named Sidney, a cultured Jewish academic, and how he copes with life's trials. Like A Raisin in the Sun, it deals with issues of race but also explores women's fight for equality, social stigmas, and homosexuality.

Themes in Lorraine Hansberry's Work

Lorraine Hansberry had an uncanny ability to identify the overarching social, political, and emotional issues plaguing the African-American community and express them in relatable ways for all readers of all races. Although she often wrote about the African-American experience, her themes and stories cross cultural boundaries and speak to a broad audience. Moral choices, deferred dreams, and racial injustice are common themes in her writing.

Deferred Dreams

A common topic in Hansberry's writing and other literary works from the Harlem Renaissance is the idea of unrealized dreams. The African-American community realized their promise of the American Dream, an idea of freedom, equality and opportunity for all, was not as readily available to them because of racism, segregation, and institutionalized discrimination. The Jim Crow laws were enforced until 1965, and neighborhoods and schools were still segregated. African-American writers expressed the African-American community's anger at the inequality and mistreatment.

Langston Hughes's famous poem, "Harlem" (1951), which explores dreams that have yet to be realized, inspired the title of Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun.

Racial Injustice

Hansberry's writing surfaces racial injustice issues and the treatment of African-American people post-World War II. Although the work and contributions the African-American community made were fundamental in establishing America, their rights were revoked, and the community was treated as less-than. Hansberry explores this in the Younger family in A Raisin in the Sun with their struggle to realize their dreams and their desire to move to a more affluent, safe, and predominantly white neighborhood.

Lorraine Hansberry Quotes

Lorraine Hansberry was an influential figure during her lifetime and brief writing career, but it was cut short because of cancer. Her words continue to be a source of inspiration today.

This is a sentiment echoed by Walter Younger Jr. in A Raisin in the Sun. In an argument with his mother, he expresses how he feels he is in a cycle of poverty, always working but never able to get ahead.

Spoken during her speech “The Nation Needs Your Gifts” at the Readers Digest and United Negro College Fund creative writing conference in 1964, this phrase would inspire a song by Nina Simone about Lorraine Hansberry and the title of Lorraine Hansberry's autobiography. It expressed her continued pride in her ethnicity and a call for the African-Americans to be agents of change and improvement for their community.