Colonialism Exposed In Lorraine Hansberry's Les Blancs

In the play Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry the effects of colonialism is a theme that is irrevocably present throughout the plot. The play is set in a fictional country in Africa and it depicts in detail the results of European presence. Although the setting and characters were fictional the story line followed and contained various realistic situations and issues that existed and continues to exist in colonized countries. Some major issues that are presented in the play that transcends into contemporary post-colonial societies include racism, inequality and resistance. Lourraine Hansberry initiates writing in 1960, she had several drafts that remained unfinished when she died in 1965. Her former husband, Robert Nemiroff, drawing on notes and …show more content…
Determining authorship and authorial intention behind this play, which explores racial tensions, is a difficult process which is further complicated by the fact that Hansberry was an African-American woman, Nemiroff a white man. It may be impossible to know how much of Les Blancs in its present state was Hansberry's creation, and how much her original intent may have been changed, consciously or not, by Nemiroff's work. What is known, however, is Hansberry's determination to use her work as an agent of social change.
In the dismantlement of a colonial system as Franz Fanon asserts in his ever relevant book The Wretched of the Earth, he describes the vast difference between the rich and the poor and he explains the means by which the colonizers commands and maintains their power over the colonized. If one should use Fanon’s book as a guide while