Profile On Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry is much loved stateside, so why is she all but unknown this side of the Atlantic? In simple terms, Lorraine Hansberry is what you get if Arthur Miller had been born a black woman. If Death of a Salesman is about the American Dream, Hansberry s A Raisin In The Sun, is about the American dream if you re black and the multiple barriers constantly placed in your way.

The play centres on the Youngers, a black family living in a cramped apartment in Chicago. Walter, the man of the house, wants to pursue his version of the American dream by going into business and running a liquor store. He fills his son, Travis head with promises of a brighter future. But Walter s own problems with alcohol are a source of tension between him and his wife Ruth and his mother, Lena, whose apartment they all live in. In addition to this, his sister Beneatha is studying to be a doctor and is struggling to be taken seriously by the men in her life. Lena s husband has died, leaving a life insurance pay out for ten thousand dollars that Walter wants his mother to invest in his business. However Lena is unwilling to put money into the liquor store, having seen the misery that alcohol causes. Instead, she puts down a deposit on a house in a nicer neighbourhood called Clybourne Park. Not long after, they are visited by a Mr Linder, who politely tells them, the residents of Clybourne Park do not want a black family living near them, and offers to buy the house off them, at a profit. This comes at a time when a large sum of the life insurance money has gone missing and the Youngers are in financial desperation. This leaves them in a dilemma of whether to take the money, or stand up for their dignity and the right to live wherever they want. At first glance, a family wanting to move to a new neighbourhood and the welcoming committee not wanting them to is not the most obvious dramatic fodder. And yet, this was clearly a story very close to the author s heart.

Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19^th, 1930, the youngest daughter of a former teacher and a property broker. The Hansberrys were socially minded, and they were part of the Chicago branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, or NAACP for short. In 1940, Her father, Carl Hansberry fought and won a long and costly legal battle, making it illegal to discriminate against people of colour when selling property. Growing up, Lorraine was taught above all, there were two things which were never to be betrayed: the family and the race . The influence of this legal battle, coupled with this high value of integrity can both be found in A Raisin In The Sun.

Hansberry studied studied art, literature and drama at the University of Wisconsin. During this time, she grew more and more politically engaged. She moved to New York, and in 1953, married Robert Nemiroff, a white, Jewish songwriter and political activist at a time when interracial marriage was still illegal in most of America. Nemiroff s success as a songwriter meant that Lorraine didn t have to go out to work, giving her the freedom to focus on her own writing. The marriage was not successful, and although they remained close, they separated quietly after just four years. It was also in 1957 that Hansberry wrote A Raisin In The Sun, her most successful work. When it opened at the Ethel Barrymore theatre, it made Hansberry the first black woman to have her play produced on Broadway. At 29, she became the youngest American to be given the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Sadly, Lorraine Hansberry died on January 12^th1965 aged just 34 after a long battle with cancer.

A Raisin In The Sun can be read as one family trying to achieve the American dream and the barriers that get in the way for people of colour. America did not have a rigid class system or an aristocracy like Britain. So Americans, being keen to attract immigrant workers to build its infrastructure, perpetuated this idea of the American dream . The idea that it doesn t matter who you are or what your background is, you can make a success of yourself in America and achieve wealth and prosperity. It s practically impossible to talk about the American dream in the theatre without mentioning Arthur Miller s Death of A Salesman. Death of A Salesman follows the life and struggles of Willy Loman, a travelling salesman who is in constant pursuit of the American dream, but is never able to achieve it. If we contrast this with A Raisin In The Sun we can see certain key differences. Whilst not being happy or fulfilled, Willy has still had a job that has allowed him to support his wife, living in a small house in Brooklyn. If we compare that with the Youngers, Walter s permanent full-time job has never paid him enough to leave the family home. His wife and mother have had to work as domestic servants in people s kitchens and people are trying to stop him from even moving into a nice house! Walter s dreams of being a businessman, Beneatha s dreams of being a doctor, even Mama s dreams of having a garden can all be seen as examples of the American dream. However, this play shows us that American society didn`t equate success for blacks and whites to be the same thing. It was a dream sold to everyone but ultimately the deal was, if you`re not white they will build the dream on your back.

Not only does A Raisin In The Sun tackle racial issues, but also gender. Hansberry stated in a 1959 interview that the most oppressed group of any oppressed group will be women, who are twice oppressed . If we examine this statement, we can see that this idea has made its way into the play through the way that Walter treats Ruth. Walter frequently takes his frustration out on the women in his life, and Ruth arguably gets the worst of it. In some cases, he makes sweeping statements about all black women, stating in act one scene one: We one group of men tied to a race of women with small minds . Later on, his comments become a lot more personal when he says to her who even cares about you? This is particularly stinging because as her husband, Walter is the man who should care about her the most. This provides a good example of how oppressed men can treat oppressed women, but there is another side to it. This idea of double oppression begins to hint at the topic of intersectionality. The idea that a person may face discrimination not due to one specific aspect of their identity, but due to a combination of aspects that make up their identity. It is the combination of prejudices such as misogyny and racism that are making black women be twice oppressed thus putting up even more barriers to pursuing the American dream.

If Hansberry lived longer, her works might have shown the intersection of not only race and gender, but also sexuality. After her marriage ended, Hansberry went on to have several relationships with women, and she also campaigned for feminist causes and against homophobia. Robert Nemiroff, her ex-husband is largely responsible for how we see Hansberry today, as he collected some of her letters, journals and unfinished works and turned it into a play entitled To Be Young, Gifted and Black , which was very successful. However, whilst preserving her legacy, Nemiroff has been accused of editing out much of her true sexuality, meaning a key part of her as an individual is somewhat lost to us.

When A Raisin in The Sun opened on Broadway on the 10^th of March 1959, it was seen as a risky investment. A play aimed specifically at Black people would seem like an odd choice as Black people did not go to the theatre in any great numbers. As the writer and social critic James Baldwin put it Black people ignored the theatre because the theatre had always ignored them . Today it s seen as a classic, which helped to give black people a space in mainstream theatre. Had she lived longer, who knows what else she might have been able to achieve?