Re-reading this powerful and humorous play about race and The American Dream remained as unsentimental and wonderful the first time I read it in high school.

Ms. Hansberry's characters are unforgettable, with Walter and his powerful mother Lena heading the household. Ruth, Walter's long-suffering wife holds her own with a backbone of steel and sweat; and as do their son Travis, and Beneatha, Walter's sister who uses education as a way out of the systemic poverty that they have suffered for a long time.

Clybourne Park appears as the Youngers' new address, and will later reappear in Bruce Norris' satirical riff on "Raisin" years later. But this one remains the marvel and classic that it is.

I wanted to re-read this before Looking for Lorraine arrives in the mail Thursday.

This play starts a bit slow, but the ending packs a powerful punch. I found this to be deeply moving.

From BBC Radio 3 - Drama on 3:
This ground-breaking play, set on Chicago's South Side in the 1950's, revolves around the divergent dreams and conflicts within three generations of an Afro-American working-class family. A Raisin in the Sun was the first play written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway. In this new production for radio, rarely produced scenes from the original play, which were cut from the original film and stage and subsequent contemporary stage productions, have been reinstated.

Walter Lee Younger ....... Danny Sapani
Lena Younger (Mama) ....... Dona Croll
Ruth Younger ...... Nadine Marshall
Beneatha Younger ...... Lenora Critchlow
Travis Younger ...... Segun Fawole
Asagai/Bobo ..... Jude Akwudike
Mrs. Johnson ..... Cecelia Noble
Karl Lindner ...... Sean Baker
George Murchinson...... Richard Pepple
Produced and directed by Pauline Harris

Further Info.
A Raisin In The Sun has been hailed as a "pivotal play in the history of the American Black theatre". The Broadway production opened in 1959 and starred Sidney Poitier and was winner of the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award as Best Play of the Year. Hansberry was the first black playwright and the youngest ever American to win the award. The film version of A Raisin In The Sun was released in 1961, and honoured with a special award at the Cannes Film Festival.
All experiences in this play echo a lawsuit to which the playwright Lorraine Hansberry's family was a party when they fought to have their day in court because a previous class action about racially motivated restrictive covenants was similar to the case at hand.
By portraying a black family with a greater realism and complexity than ever before, the twenty-eight year old Lorraine Hansberry forced both blacks and whites to re-examine the deferred dreams of black America and forever changed the American theatre.
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965) Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06yp4cz

In his poem “Harlem”, Langston Hughes wrote: What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?

As far as dreams go, the Younger family has plenty: Walter Lee wants to leave his life as a chauffeur and become a businessman; his sister, Beneatha, has aspirations of becoming a doctor; Ruth, his wife, wants to escape their roach-infested apartment and give her son a bed of his own; and Mama dreams of having a bit of ground—just enough to plant some flowers. But dreams are for other people until Mama receives an insurance check in the mail. A check that might finally be the answer to everything the Younger family ever dared to dream.

This review is based on the play with a forward written by Robert Nemiroff. This edition is the most complete ever published—restoring two scenes that were before unknown to the public. I can’t imagine anything being removed from this classic work. Each scene is a masterpiece in storytelling—carefully developing each character to expose their vulnerabilities and insecurities and examining their struggle to break free from ties that bind them economically, socially, and culturally.

Hansberry’s opening words allow us to feel the weight and heaviness that this family shoulders. They epitomize the words “poor, but proud” and it’s clear that every-day life has taken a toll on them. Hansberry even makes the furniture tired as it too seems to realize the futility of hope: The Younger living room would be a comfortable and well-ordered room if it were not for a number of indestructible contradictions to this state of being. Its furnishings are typical and undistinguished and their primary feature now is that they have clearly had to accommodate the living of too many people for too many years—and they are tired. Still, we can see that at some time, a time probably no longer remembered by the family (except perhaps for Mama), the furnishings of this room were actually selected with care and love and even hope—and brought to this apartment and arranged with taste and pride.

A Raisin in the Sun is an homage to the African-American family struggling for something better and wanting nothing more than to be treated with respect and dignity. It tackles the women’s movement and civil rights head-on through a pair of siblings who are naïve, headstrong, likeable, and well-meaning: one trying to find her place in the world and the other attempting to find his place within the family. Although this play was first produced in 1959, it is still relevant today as millions of Americans live at or below the federal poverty line and minorities continue to struggle with social and economic inequities.

Throughout the play, Hansberry has Mama nurturing a small plant that she places outside the sole window of the family’s apartment. Like her own family, the plant struggles to thrive despite the constant care given it. The plant is dear to Mama as it represents the closest thing to a garden that she would likely ever have. Unlike her children, she doesn’t need a business or a career or a house to make her happy. All she wants is a small patch of dirt so that she could watch something grow. It seems that Minne Aumonier, an 18th century poet, had the same idea in mind when she wrote, “When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden.” Like we always suspected, Mama really does know best.

عن الظروف الاجتماعية للسود .. مشاكلهم و حياتهم في امريكا ..، مسرحية رائعة ادخلتنى الى عالمهم ..
و جعلتني اعايش آلامهم .. آمالهم .. طموحاتهم ..، كاتبة مرهفه و موهوبة فعلا انها تقدر توّصل كل دا ، و مترجمة موهوبة كمان و امينة على ما اتذكر :) ، لأنى قرأت الكتاب دا زمان من فترة طويلة الحقيقة

To be honest I only read this book because I had to for school. The description makes the book should a lot better but in reality it has no plot. The whole book is about moving, money, and mistakes. There are also a bunch of untied ends that don't make sense or add to book. Overall hated this book and do not recommend.

Hansberry's death from cancer at 34 just six years after the publication and first production of Raisin in the Sun was a real loss to both the literary and dramatic worlds. Not everyone likes to read plays; I enjoy them. This one is exceptional. The characters are well-defined, real, memorable; the interaction among them vibrant, interesting, at times gut-wrenching, never dull. Raisin is a snapshot of black urban life on the eve of the sixties, just before the civil rights movement. And yet, we who know history can read the play as Monday morning quarterbacks and see the foreshadowing in changing hairstyles and generational disputes. Three generations of Youngers share a two room flat in Chicago and struggle to maintain family, dignity, dreams, life and morality against often insurmountable odds. Most highly recommended!

This play was by far the worst thing I have ever read. They use some terrible language, which was definitely not appropriate for my 6th grade class to read. I for one, hated it. My teacher, someone who loves to read about civil rights, was so enthusiastic about this that we even had to act it out. We wasted two weeks of classes acting. We had to say curses out loud and kiss and hug just like the play. It was horribly written. The story plot was uneventful. I cannot read something like this again or I will die.

A Raisin in the Sun (1959) is hands down one of my favorite plays. Usually, only Oscar (my smol son) can lure me in with his dramas but Lorraine might have snatched that crown from his hands. Where Oscar is witty and hilarious, Lorraine is ruthless and raw. She doesn't shy away from showing the harsh reality black people, especially black women, faced in the United States.

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up
      like a raisin in the sun?
      Or fester like a sore—
      And then run?
      Does it stink like rotten meat?
      Or crust and sugar over—
      like a syrupy sweet?

      Maybe it just sags
      like a heavy load.

      Or does it explode?
– Harlem (by Langston Hughes)

Hughes was specifically addressing the situation of blacks in America, who had been systematically denied access to the various American dreams of education, career, purchasing power, etc. Asking if deferred dreams explode is a subtle (or not so subtle) way of reminding readers that deferred dreams don’t always decay and disappear; they can very well trigger explosions.

The epigraph is a way for Hansberry to point to both the universal nature of her play – everyone has dreams – and its particular nature – black Americans have been forced to defer their dreams more than others.

The play speaks to issues that are now inescapable: value systems of the black family; concepts of African American beauty and identity; class and generational conflicts; the relationships of husbands and wives, black men and women; the outspoken (if then yet unnamed) feminism of the daughter; and, in the penultimate scene between Beneatha and Asagai, the larger statement of the play which functions as a mirror to the central battle of its time: integration vs pan-africanism.

The story tells of a black family's experiences in the Washington Park Subdivision of Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood as they attempt to "better" themselves with an insurance payout of $10,000 following the death of the father.

Walter and Ruth Younger, their son Travis, along with Walter's mother Lena (Mama) and Walter's sister Beneatha, live in poverty in a dilapidated two-bedroom apartment on Chicago's south side. Walter is barely making a living as a limousine driver. Though Ruth is content with their lot, Walter is not and desperately wishes to become wealthy. His plan is to invest in a liquor store in partnership with Willy and Bobo, street-smart acquaintances of Walter's.

While all this is going on, Beneatha's character and direction in life are being defined for us by two different men: Beneatha's wealthy and educated boyfriend George Murchison, and Joseph Asagai. George represents the "fully assimilated black man" who denies his African heritage with a "smarter than thou" attitude, which Beneatha finds disgusting, while dismissively mocking Walter's lack of money and education. Asagai patiently teaches Beneatha about her African heritage; he gives her thoughtfully useful gifts from Africa, while pointing out she is unwittingly assimilating herself into white ways. She straightens her hair, for example, which he characterizes as "mutilation."

A Raisin in the Sun was the first play written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway, as well as the first with a black director (Lloyd Richards). With a cast in which all but one minor character is African-American, A Raisin in the Sun was considered a risky investment, and it took over a year for producer Philip Rose to raise enough money to launch it. There was disagreement with how it should be played, with focus on the mother or focus on the son. When the play hit New York, Poitier played it with the focus on the son and found not only his calling but an audience enthralled.

However, the reception of the play showed in a shocking way the disconnect between white and black culture in the US. While the play was celebrated by white and black audiences alike, the reasons were completely different ones. Thus, in many reviews from white people (and later academic studies), the Younger family was transformed into an acceptably 'middle class' family. The decision to move became a desire to 'integrate' (rather than, as Mama says simply, 'to find the nicest house for the least amount of money for my family … Them houses they put up for colored in them areas way out always seem to cost twice as much.')

The Younger family is part of the black majority, and the concerns dismissed as 'middle class' – buying a home and moving into 'white folks' neighborhoods' – are actually reflective of the essence of black people's striving and the will to defeat segregation, discrimination, and national oppression. There is no such thing as 'white folks' neighborhood' except to racists and to those submitting to racism.

Mama herself – about whose "acceptance" of her "place" in the society there is not a word in the play, and who, in quest of her family's survival over the soul- and body-crushing conditions of the ghetto, is prepared to defy housing-pattern taboos, threats, bombs, and God knows what else – became the safely "conservative" matriarch, upholder of the social order and proof that if one only perseveres with faith, everything will come out right in the end and the-system-ain't-so-bad-after-all. At the same time, necessarily, Big Walter Younger – the husband who reared this family with her and whose unseen presence and influence can be heard in every scene – vanished from analysis.

And perhaps most ironical of all to the playwright, who had herself as a child been almost killed in such a real-life story, the climax of the play became, pure and simple, a "happy ending" – despite the fact that it leaves the Youngers on the brink of what will surely be, in their new home, at best a nightmare of uncertainty. ("If he thinks that's a happy ending," said Hansberry in an interview, "I invite him to come live in one of the communities where the Youngers are going!")

In her early childhood, Lorraine's parents bought a house in the white neighborhood of Washington Park, an action that resulted in a legal case (Hansberry v. Lee (1940)). Lorraine reflects upon the litigation in her book To Be Young, Gifted, and Black:

n  Twenty-five years ago, [my father] spent a small personal fortune, his considerable talents, and many years of his life fighting, in association with NAACP attorneys, Chicago’s ‘restrictive covenants’ in one of this nation's ugliest ghettos. That fight also required our family to occupy disputed property in a hellishly hostile ‘white neighborhood’ in which literally howling mobs surrounded our house. ... My memories of this ‘correct’ way of fighting white supremacy in America include being spat at, cursed and pummeled in the daily trek to and from school. And I also remember my desperate and courageous mother, patrolling our household all night with a loaded German Luger (pistol), doggedly guarding her four children, while my father fought the respectable part of the battle in the Washington court.n

The play develops the theme of standing up to racial discrimination by fighting it on many fronts. By cowing down to threats by whites or by accepting financial considerations to accept the demands made by the whites only make life harder for the colored people. In the play, the Younger family aspires to better living conditions and better education. They are conscientious law abiding citizens but the neighbors cannot see beyond their color.

In addition to its brilliant exploration of timely themes such as the emasculation of the black man and the consequences of instutionalized racism, the play could score in other areas as well, especially with its humour. Hansberry had a knack for including scenes that were absolutely true-to-life while still exploring the comedy of the situation:

Ruth: What kind of eggs do you want?
Walter: Not scrambled. (RUTH starts to scramble eggs)

I have never encountered a more loving and real family in fiction. Lorraine balanced the heart-wrenching and light-hearted scenes with excellence. A Raisin in the Sun made me laugh and cry and above all, think. You need this in your life!

A perfect play, as specific and intimate as it is timeless. By her late 20s Hansberry was already operating at a level most writers never attain, confidently investigating huge themes like race, class, money, diaspora, revolution, grief, love, and generational strife (and even putting forward some convincing answers to a few of the questions she asks) without sacrificing the humanity, tenderness, or humor of the particular story she's telling. Like all the best drama, Raisin makes use of a deceptively simple, even mundane premise—a poor Black family debates what to do with a hefty life-insurance check—to probe deep into her characters' inner worlds as well as the outer world they inhabit. The play is just three acts with about six major speaking parts, but by the end it feels like it encompasses nearly everything. Hansberry clearly loves her characters, rendering their voices and their struggles with deep sympathy even when they themselves are absorbed by rage, despair, or ridiculousness, and I found it easy to love them too.

A true masterpiece, exactly as good as you'd expect from a writer who was praised by James Baldwin and MLK and was a friend and muse to Nina Simone. Her death by cancer at just 34 would be a terrible sadness no matter the circumstances, but in light of her immense talent it's one of the great tragedies of literature.

First published in 1959, this play tells the story of a poor African-American family ruled by "mama" who has big plans to make a better life for her family, but must wait for "the check" and overcome a few obstacles along the way. (like her bitter and self-absorbed son Walter)

Set in a small rundown roach-infested apartment on Chicago's south side, A RAISIN IN THE SUN brings to light issues of racism and segregation, but also family pride and forgiveness.

Another surprisingly good play!