Lorraine Hansberry wrote many speeches, plays, reviews, articles but she is most noted for her most well known for a play, which was based off a few short lines from Langston Hughes poem Harlem.
“What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”
The play “A Raisin in the Sun”, was also based on Hansberry own experience as a young African-American woman living in a white neighborhood.
The play tells the story of a lower-class African-American family that struggles to gain middle-class recognition. In the beginning of the play, the Youngers are waiting for an insurance check of $10,00 from a life insurance policy of the deceased husband of Mama, Mr. Younger’s. The plot of the play primarily focuses around how each of the adult members plans how he or she would like to use insurance check. The matriarch of the family, Mama, wants use part of the money as a down payment on a house in a white neighborhood to fulfill a dream that she once shared with her late husband. The son, Walter Lee Younger, who is desperately trying to attest that he can provide for his …show more content…
It won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award hence making Hansberry the youngest and the first African-American writer to receive this award. Hansberry's goal was to show "the many gradations in average African-American family”. New York Times stated A Raisin in the Sun, which brought about the issues of African-American life to Broadway, "changed American theatre forever." The reason why this play changed American theatre is because it was the first play produced on Broadway that was written by an African-American woman. It was also the first play to have a cast with such a large number of African-American people in it. A Raisin in the Sun was considered to be the best play of 1959 by the New York Drama Critics
“What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”
The play “A Raisin in the Sun”, was also based on Hansberry own experience as a young African-American woman living in a white neighborhood.
The play tells the story of a lower-class African-American family that struggles to gain middle-class recognition. In the beginning of the play, the Youngers are waiting for an insurance check of $10,00 from a life insurance policy of the deceased husband of Mama, Mr. Younger’s. The plot of the play primarily focuses around how each of the adult members plans how he or she would like to use insurance check. The matriarch of the family, Mama, wants use part of the money as a down payment on a house in a white neighborhood to fulfill a dream that she once shared with her late husband. The son, Walter Lee Younger, who is desperately trying to attest that he can provide for his …show more content…
It won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award hence making Hansberry the youngest and the first African-American writer to receive this award. Hansberry's goal was to show "the many gradations in average African-American family”. New York Times stated A Raisin in the Sun, which brought about the issues of African-American life to Broadway, "changed American theatre forever." The reason why this play changed American theatre is because it was the first play produced on Broadway that was written by an African-American woman. It was also the first play to have a cast with such a large number of African-American people in it. A Raisin in the Sun was considered to be the best play of 1959 by the New York Drama Critics