A RAISIN IN THE SUN by Lorraine Hansberry

The story:
The play is about the working-class Younger family, who dreams of leaving behind the run-down tenement apartment where they have lived for many years. The son Walter, a chauffeur, dreams of making a fortune by investing in a liquor store but foolishly gives his money to a con artist. His sister Beneatha, a somewhat flighty college student, tries to find her identity and embraces the "back to Africa" philosophy of a Nigerian friend. Their mother, the matriarch, dreams of buying a home, and does so with her late husband's insurance money, but the house is in an all-white neighborhood. Their racist future neighbors hire a man named Karl Lindner as a "Welcoming Committee" to try to buy them out to prevent the neighborhood's integration. However, Walter takes a stand and refuses to be intimidated or bought out; in this, he stops deferring his family's dreams and helps them advance.
The central idea of the play is concerned with combating the myth of black contentment. The stress of poverty is vividly portrayed through the tight quarters as five people are squeezed together onstage into a one room apartment.

About the author:
When she was eight, the family moved into an all white neighborhood, where they faced racial discrimination.
Hansberry attended a predominantly white public school while her parents fought against segregation.
Hansberry's father engaged in a legal battle against a racially Restrictive covenant that attempted to prohibit African-American families from buying homes in the area. The legal struggle over their move led to the landmark Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940). Though victors in the Supreme Court, Hansberry's family was subjected to what Hansberry would later describe as a "hellishily hostile white neighborhood." this experience later inspired her to write her most famous work, A Raisin in the Sun.
Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin and worked on the staff of Freedom magazine. It was at this time she wrote A Raisin in the Sun. The play was a huge success. It was the first play written by an African American woman and produced on Broadway. It also recieved the New York Drama Critics Award making Hansberry the youngest and first African American to recieve the Award. She then moved to New York in 1950.
She married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish literature student and songwriter, in 1953. They separated in 1957 and divorced in 1964.
Although Hansberry never openly declared her lesbian identity, she wrote significant, pseudoanonymous letters to The Ladder, one of the first lesbian publications in the United States that was published by The Daughters of Bilitis.
She died of pancreatic cancer on January 12, 1965 at the age of 34.


Buchdaten:
A RAISIN IN THE SUN by Lorraine Hansberry
Taschenbuch: 160 Seiten
Verlag: Vintage, New York; Auflage: Reprint (Dez. 1994)
Sprache: Englisch
ISBN: 0679755330
Preis: € 4,95





More works from the same author:

hier online bestellen Spark Notes a Raisin in the Sun (Spark Notes)