A raisin in the sun can dry up – as can a dream deferred, according to the classic Langston Hughes poem that inspired the title of this great 1959 play by Lorraine Hansberry. But in that same poem, Hughes evoked other possible scenarios of what can happen if a dream is forever deferred, always put off for another day. Hughes suggests that a dream deferred can fester, like an untreated sore; or it can come to stink, like unrefrigerated meat allowed to rot; or it can crust over, like a piece of candy left out in the open; or it can sag and weigh upon one’s shoulders, like an unbearably heavy load carried forever. Or it can explode. Named for the first of those possibilities, A Raisin in the Sun explores them all with singular intensity, as it dramatizes the challenges facing the Youngers, a mid-20th-century African American family whose dreams of escaping the slums of Chicago’s South Side seem for a time likely to be forever deferred.

I began re-reading A Raisin in the Sun on a Mother’s Day some time ago because of the character of Lena Younger, the matriarch of the Younger family. Lena -- or "Mama," as she is customarily called by the other characters -- is, to my mind, one of the truly great mothers in all of literature. The stage directions that accompany Lena’s first entrance in the play emphasize author Hansberry’s love and reverence for the character – and make me wonder if Lena Younger was based on some real-life family member for whom Hansberry felt comparable tenderness:

She is a woman in her early sixties, full-bodied and strong. She is one of those women of a certain grace and beauty who wear it so unobtrusively that it takes a while to notice….[B]eing a woman who has adjusted to many things in life and overcome many more, her face is full of strength. She has, we can see, wit and faith of a kind that keep her eyes lit and full of interest and expectancy. She is, in a word, a beautiful woman. Her bearing is perhaps most like the noble bearing of the women of the Hereros of Southwest Africa… (p. 23).

In the character of Lena, we see a looking-back to the strength of character of African American women of the past – brave matriarchs who worked to hold families together against the horrors of slavery and the indignities of segregation. And her character takes us even further back in time: to traditional tribal nations of West Africa where women’s wisdom and leadership were respected and valued, in stark contrast with the “man’s world” mentality that has permeated too much of American life for too many years.

As the play begins, Lena and the members of her household – her daughter, Beneatha; her son, Walter Lee; Walter Lee’s wife, Ruth; and Travis, Lena’s grandson and the son of Walter Lee and Ruth – are awaiting a $10,000 insurance check attendant upon the passing of Lena’s late husband. All are in agreement that they want to make a change from their current circumstances – a South Side apartment building where the facilities are so substandard that the Youngers must share a bathroom with other families on the same floor, and where children chase rats through the alleys for play.

Disagreement occurs with regard to how to make a change, what to do with the money. Lena dreams of moving the whole family out of the inner city, to a new home in a nicer area. Beneatha, age 20, whose intellectual gifts are considerable, but who has flitted from one interest to another – drama, guitar, horseback-riding, photography – dreams of becoming a physician. Her two suitors show radically different responses to this dream: George Murchison, from a wealthy family, pooh-poohs her dream as assiduously as he puts down the West African heritage in which Beneatha takes pride. By contrast, Joseph Asagai, an international student from Nigeria, encourages Beneatha to follow her dreams, even as he pokes gentle fun at her dilettantish ways.

Most crucially for the dramatic action of the play, 35-year-old Walter Lee, dissatisfied with his work as a chauffeur, dreams of becoming a wheeling-and-dealing entrepreneur by buying into a liquor store with some friends – never mind that the reader or viewer wonders at once, as Lena wonders aloud, whether the South Side of Chicago needs another liquor store. Both slavery and segregation were all-out assaults on the manhood of the African American man; and in the character of Walter Lee, we see someone who is desperate to prove that he is a man, and who may not see that he is trying to prove his manhood in all the wrong ways.

Given the money by Lena as a sign of her trust, Walter Lee makes a critical, and critically bad, choice that makes it seem for a time as though all of the Youngers’ dreams will go forever unfulfilled. The passages of the play in which Walter Lee confronts the unraveling of his liquor-store dream are among the most painful in the play. And as if there wasn’t enough going on in the Youngers’ lives, they receive a visit from one Karl Lindner, a representative of the Clybourne Park “welcoming committee” who announces that the committee is willing to pay the Youngers not to move into the hitherto all-white community.

Advantages of this Modern Library edition of A Raisin in the Sun include an introductory essay by Robert Nemiroff, Hansberry’s widower and literary executor, who provides helpful and informative insights into how the play came to be and how it fits into Hansberry’s too-short literary career (she was only 34 years old when she died of cancer). Another added strength of this edition is that it includes a scene that was excised from the original play for time reasons, but that makes a critical contribution to the thematic unity of Hansberry’s drama.

In this scene, a neighbor of the Youngers, one Mrs. Johnson, pays the family a visit; while ostensibly she wishes to congratulate the Youngers on “getting ready to ‘move on up a little higher’” (p. 83), she makes a point of imagining a newspaper headline about the Youngers’ new home being bombed, and ends up denouncing the Youngers as “one proud-acting bunch of colored folks” (p. 87). Lindner’s willingness to offer a bribe to maintain Clybourne Park’s all-white status is thus complemented by Mrs. Johnson’s resentment of an African American family that is not content with their circumstances – and the challenges facing the Youngers are doubly emphasized.

In his foreword, Nemiroff expresses muted respect for the 1961 film version of A Raisin in the Sun, but shows a decided preference for the 1989 American Playhouse version, with Esther Rolle as Lena and Danny Glover as Walter Lee. I respectfully disagree. I think Daniel Petrie’s 1961 film is a masterpiece; its stark black-and-white photography captures beautifully the Youngers’ struggles against a world that divides everything into black and white. Amid an array of gifted actors in great performances (including Ruby Dee as Ruth and Louis Gossett Jr. as George Murchison), Sidney Poitier as Walter Lee delivers one of the most focused and intense portrayals in the history of American cinema. Poitier’s performance is a tour de force, and is not to be missed.

When I consider Lorraine Hansberry’s work, I continually find myself coming back to the tragedy of her early demise. Only 34 years old – so very young. Imagine if Shakespeare had died when he was 34, in 1598. No Hamlet then, no King Lear, no The Tempest. What great plays were our nation and the world denied by Hansberry’s dying before her time? But even more than that, I feel saddened that Hansberry was not able to live out her full span of years for her own sake. I like to imagine her living on for many decades more, having children of her own if she wanted to, becoming a real-life Mama Younger in her own right and sharing her wisdom and insights with future generations. Sadly, that was not to be. But A Raisin in the Sun endures, as an undying testament to Hansberry’s literary talent, and to the imperishable African American dream of which Hansberry, like Langston Hughes before her, wrote so eloquently.

Great play. Great film. Everyone should read it...you can't say you truly love literature if you haven't read this one.

Wow. We just finished reading this, me and my class. As a whole I don't think we really got it but I did. This book was awesome and I'm glad people appreciated it enough to make two movies out of it. Truly an amazing book. And even though I've read it a couple times now, I think I'll read it again someday! :)

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Reading this anew for a college seminar. I love the wit that I never really noticed Hansberry wrote into these characters. But more than even this, is the complexity of everyone -from Lena Younger to even little Travis. Amiri Baraka really pointed this out in a new version of the book, that Lena Younger as the family matriarch doesn't merely represent black conservatism. How could she when she is literally willing to risk making a home in an all white, blue collar neighborhood? Lena is a rebel in her own right and this recognition and complication of her as a character for me really brings to light how delicately and deliberately Hansberry wrote her characters. All these years after reading it, I've never loved so deeply a play...and I also don't think there is a play that quite encapsulates the spirit of urbanized Black Americans like this one does.

A Raisin in the Sun is a masterpiece, a timeless play that is an honest portrayal of the North for African Americans. I think to really grasp the meaning, it’s important to first look at the title. Langston Hughes’s poem, “Harlem”, asks what happens to dream deferred, does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? I admit the first time I read it I didn’t really think about the story within, I was glad for the possibilities and hope for a better future. Now that I’m older (maybe a little wiser) I see that there’s so many layers to this play. There’s class division, questioning of religious belief, and gender and generational differences that deserve acknowledgement.
One of the first things I noticed was how the apartment was introduced. It is described as “would be a comfortable and well-ordered room if it were not for a number of indestructible contradictions to this state of being” (23). These words set the tone for how one should analyze the play. It may seem to be hopeful and a demonstration of African American humanity, but is that really the purpose? Surely there’s more to be gained. African Americans living on the south side of Chicago are people deserving of respect, however, there are racists who don’t agree, particularly those living in Clybourne Park who try to pay the Youngers to stay out of their neighborhood.
Another important theme that I think is central to understanding the play is the concept of the dream. This usually means that everyone living here has the opportunity to achieve their heart’s desire if they’re willing to work hard. In my opinion, this is not the whole truth because there are outside forces that will try to stop you, especially if you don’t fit predetermined traits of worth. Or as is the case with Brother, a partner decides their greed is more important than our dream.
The gender divide is not a focal point of the play, but I think it’s very telling of what happens in the future. At first, I thought Mama and Ruth tended to be traditionalists and Beneatha a feminist (before the term was a thing). By the end of the play, I think all the Younger women are feminists of their own design. The idea of feminism is heavily associated with white women wanting to be treated as social equals to men but it’s different for Black women because we never had the label of fragile or delicate or lady placed on us by white society. For Lena, it is reminding her son of his birthright, for Ruth and Beneatha it is trusting that she is deserving of more. They already know they’re just as responsible and able as Brother in providing for their family.
The play does end on a note of hope and an eerie threat. Yes they are moving out of a drab, spirit-killing apartment, but what about where they’re moving to? At least in their apartment, there’s a place to be, where they can exist peacefully. To integrate a neighborhood knowing they’re not welcome is not something to assume will go over smoothly. I read this as an indictment of the true nature of the North; it definitely isn’t the Promised Land it’s imagined to be.

(3.5/5)

All things considered, this was actually quite entertaining and held my interest for far more than required readings for school usually do. Personally, I’m not a fan of repetitive analyzation that results in nothing but my hand cramping and my braincell frying but this book was actually interesting to analyze, a rare occurrence for sure. The characters could have been developed more than the archetypes that they are meant to portray, but again, this is a short play and the way so much social commentary and conflict was packed into it without seeming rushed is in and of itself quite impressive. Overall, however, this made for a fairly enjoyable and thought-provoking read.

It’s dangerous, son.
What’s dangerous?
When a man goes outside his home to look for peace.

A Raisin in the Sun clearly illustrates the motivations of each member of the Younger family in an empathetic and relatable way. I could be any one of these people, and yet, as the White cis male that I am, I will never experience the prejudice and hate that surrounds Black lives or experience the difficulty of reaching the dreams that are dragged out of my reach.

The play follows a small family that is attempting to move up in life, to find a business that matters or a home that is worth more than the apartment that is falling down around them. We see the challenges of being Black in a world that shrugs off Black suffering as if it does not matter. And we see the ignorance that hides in everyday life and the manipulation that can hide in a supposed act of kindness.

This is a beautiful play that I wish I could watch live. The fallibility of the characters is most touching. The saddest part is that the tribulations faced by the characters are still relevant.

Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain’t through learning—because that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ‘cause the world done whipped him so! When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.

Read this many years ago in college but was recently reminded of it because my 16 year old daughter is reading it in English class.
Important story and it’s lessons taught should not be forgotten.

This was a quick read and I loved every page! I'm interested in watching the original version of the play with Sidney Poitier, looks good!

If Death of a Salesman was a punch to the gut, then this was a knife to the stomach followed by a brutal body-slam to the ground. If I was a high school English teacher trying to decide which one of these two classic plays to share with my students, this would easily win my vote.

My mind is completely blown by the fact that this was first produced in 1959. Lorraine Hansberry's self-assurance and bravery in tackling topics as polarizing and prescient as housing discrimination, racial segregation, urban poverty, Black masculinity, feminism, class divisions, natural hair and notions of Black beauty, assimilationism, abortion, colonialism, and of course the deceptive myth of the American Dream....all in the context of an intimate domestic drama that never once leaves its modest living room setting....is truly astonishing.

Hansberry was a prophetess and pioneer in ways I don't think I've ever fully known or appreciated before now, and I'm eager to read everything else she managed to write before cancer cruelly stole her away from us at such a tragically young age.

For all its seething rage and gut-wrenching pathos, there's a surprising amount of humor and familial love and JOY that also sings out through this play's pages. Which of course only makes its more tragic elements all the more poignant (I was moved to tears at least twice while READING this, so I'm probably going to be a blubbering mess when I see it performed live on stage next weekend).

The dialogue crackles with the natural rhythms and half-truths of real human conversation, as opposed to contrived "characters" delivering stagey, self-conscious monologues.

And while there's an urgent (and sadly still too relevant) specificity to the racial discrimination and economic struggles faced by these characters that should not be downplayed or ignored, there's also an honest and universal depiction of the human condition here that transcends time, race, or class.

Looking forward to checking out some of the film adaptations as well as seeing the current Off-Broadway production next weekend.

This book captures an essential moment in African-American (and by extension, American) history. I’m not sure it lives up to the hype. Of course, Hansberry might have become an August Wilson if she had lived longer. At any rate, as a Chicagoan, I’m always sorry to see how little we honor our literary and historical giants. I am 50, a South Sider, and a longtime former resident of Woodlawn, her childhood neighborhood, and I’ve only just now driven by her neglected childhood house (which also ought to be famous for the part it played in the history of Northern integration).

Fun book to read in English, sad and Walter drove me NUTS but all and all really good! I want to see this play so bad now.

talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, showstopping, spectacular, never been done before. the last scene literally left me in tears, this was such an Experience and a joy to read.