Harlem
Langston Hughes

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?

“I just tried to find the nicest place for the least amount of money for my family”--Mama

“Americans suffer from an ignorance that is not only colossal, but sacred”---James Baldwin

A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, first produced in 1959, is one of the great American plays, set in Chicago and pertaining to racist housing practices, something Hansberry’s family actually experienced when they moved, suffering rocks through their windows and a (failed) lawsuit against their moving in. Hansberry faced years of no one wanting to publish this play, then no one wanted to produce the play, then no one actually wanted to rent space for a theatrical production of the play, but when it was finally produced it met popular and critical acclaim, the first commercially successful play by an African American author.

One can actually say this play helped to create some of the conditions for The Fair Housing Act of 1968 that prohibits discrimination concerning housing based on race, religion, national origin or sex. The Fair Housing Act is one of the great legislative achievements of the civil rights era. Yet in 1975, the cast of Raisin, the musical, became involved in defense of a family whose home in Queens, New York City, had been fire-bombed, and the 1972 City Commissioner of Human Rights Report became public, citing “eleven cases in the last eighteen months in which minority-owned homes had been set afire or vandalized, a church had been bombed, and a school bus had been attacked”—and all this in presumed-left-leaning New York City alone.

What’s the play about? Mama, Walter and Ruth, Beneatha, Travis, living in a dingy south side Chicago apartment and their American dream to buy a house with some inheritance money. And some pushback they get from their new white “neighbors.” It’s also about Beneatha’s growing feminist and Africanist identity and her dream to become a doctor. It’s about Walter’s (he’s described as a volcano) dream to run a liquor store after years of driving a limo. It’s about Mama’s dream to keep the family together.

It’s about questions of assimilation, and hair and identity.

It’s also a play of crackling dialogue:

Walter: There you are. Man say to his woman: I got me a dream. His woman say: Eat your eggs.

Walter: Sometimes it’s like I can see the future stretched out in front of me—just plain as day. The future, Mama. Hanging over there at the edge of my days. Just waiting for me—a big, looming blank space—full of nothing. Just waiting for me. But it don’t have to be.

Mama: Son—how come you talk so much ’bout money?
Walter (With immense passion): Because it is life, Mama!

This play is a kind of cultural forum on the black experience in the late fifties as a foundation for the black power movements of the sixties. And is still mightily relevant today. I read it with my English teaching methods class in conjunction with ninth graders who were also reading it in a school near my campus.

Ruth: Clybourne Park? Mama, there ain’t no colored people living in Clybourne Park.
Mama: Well, I guess there’s going to be some now.
(Neighbor) Mrs. Johnson: You mean you ain’t read ’bout them colored people that was bombed out their place out there?

Later, after Johnson leaves, Beneatha: Mama, if there are two things we, as a people, have got to overcome, one is the Ku Klux Klan—and the other is Mrs. Johnson.

Walter’s liquor license deal falls through, somewhat predictably, and he nearly gives up, in despair, but it is his confrontation with Mr. Lindner of the “Welcoming Committee” that gives the ending it’s peculiar hopefulness. Family!

In Raisin, wrote James Baldwin, “never before in the entire history of the American theater had so much of the truth of black people’s lives been seen on the stage.” It paved the way for the cycle of plays from August Wilson, and many others. Racist killing in Buffalo? It's as if the war never ended; because it hasn't.

"What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?"
~from Langston Hughes' poem 'Harlem'~

A family of African-Americans, living in a flat on the south side of Chicago, must decide what to do with a $10,000 life insurance check being paid out after the death of the father. Mama wants to realize her dream of having a real home with a garden; daughter Beneatha wants to go to medical school and become a doctor; son Walter wants to invest with friends and open a liquor store. Can any of these dreams come true?

It's amazing how much about American life and family relationships playwright Hansberry was able to fit into the length of one 3-hour play! Written in 1959, Hansberry was able to see issues that were coming to the forefront of our society--not only civil rights and desegregation efforts but also feminism. Many of the topics she addresses are still important today. We have not put racism behind us yet, as recent events show all too clearly.

The May, 2019 book club selection for my library's Readers Roundtable group. A classic play; a must read.

2024 reads: 146/250

2024 tbr: 64/100

this play follows a struggling, working-class, black family in chicago. this takes a deep dive into family dynamics. we have “mom,” the matriarch who recently lost her husband; walter and ruth, a married couple who disagree about how to make money; their son, travis; and beneatha, a college student who’s not afraid to challenge social norms. while this book was written decades ago, it still felt realistic, in so many ways, to life now. i’d recommend this play and i’m hoping to one day read lorraine hansberry’s memoir.

“Then isn’t there something wrong in a house—in a world—where all dreams, good or bad, must depend on the death of a man?”

I read this with the 7th graders at my school for their last unit of the year.

I found Walter and Beneatha insufferable. I wish Ruth would have been meaner.

SO MUCH BETTER THAN I EVEN REMEMBERED! I feel like I have gone from feeling 'meh' about this title to completely falling in love with it during this re-read. What has happened to make me change my opinion so greatly?...Perhaps the fact is that I am now older and thus, better able to appreciate/absorb/understand this play more so than I did whilst reading it over a decade ago. OR, perhaps the difference in my opinion lays in the fact that this time, I *chose* to (re)read this title, instead of *having to read it* for a class. Or, perhaps I now understand that era of American history better than I did upon 1st reading (most of my history classes were about Canadian history until I got to university) and this led me to enjoy the social commentary of 1959's America that Hansberry provided...Anyways-no matter *which* factor influenced the newfound adoration I felt during my re-read, I don't care. I am just happy that I re-read this play, and (re)discovered a GEM of a story...as I said, this play is SO MUCH BETTER THAN I EVEN REMEMBERED!

Also- to the group here on the site that chose THIS as their 'play of the month' Group Read, I am in your debt. This one is bumped up to 5 stars. It is not only a great STORY in general, but as you're reading, you can SEE how it would be a great PLAY, as well. That's a good playwright right there, I think.

Plus, with only 5 characters, (well-not counting those who are not in every Act, like 'movers' or Bennie's 'boyfriends')-with 5 characters, Hansberry is able to portray SO MANY DIFFERENT Characters- even more so than these 5; but using only 5 to do it!

For example, 'Walter Lee' is many things, and actually has many different character traits- more so than I gave him for upon my first read. Also, I had forgotten how much 'Bennie' is 'the college student', 'the dreamer', 'the fair maiden with offers from men', 'the serious woman who wants to be a doctor in a time when females just ARE NOT doctors', 'the sister', 'the aunt', 'the daughter', 'the revolutionary', 'the Black woman in her 20's', 'the educated Black woman', 'the atheist', 'the sister-in-law', 'the rebellious daughter', etc. At least, she embodies all of those things/characters to me. At the end of the play, I wanted to know more about HER story...

This play is both hopeful and hopeless, at the start as well as at the end. It is up to society to determine WHY. The Younger family's society is the south side of Chicago in 1959, which was-almost *shockingly*- NOT a great time nor place to be a working class Black family- even worse than I would have thought. Personally, I forget just how very long segregation (informal or formal) existed (exists!?) in the United States and it is books like these that help the world to NOT forget such histories.

Despite being a fictional play, it felt like realistic voyeurism, SUCH was the immediacy of the writing, (despite the 1959 slang, even.)

Highly readable and absolutely unforgettable. Go NOW: Read. This. Play. --Jen from Quebec :0)

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?

I decided to assign this to my Honors American Lit class before I had even read it myself. I'm so glad I did! I really enjoyed the characters. And while students get a kick out of lines like "Why you always wear them faggoty white shoes?" it also deals with some important ideas about material versus spiritual or transcendental goals, about self-identity, and what it is to be a man. I was pleased and moved.

“Raisin in the sun” is a memorable, beautiful and powerful play. Despite the fact that it has some flaws, I think it is a successful play.

I liked the theme and the emotion behind this play. I think Hansberry was successful in creating the atmosphere and the setting, although she does not use much description. Yes, plays don't really have descriptions in a sense that a novel does, but what I mean to say is that she "shows" rather than "tells", i.e she is a decent dramatist. For instance you get the idea about characters from dialogues; there are no long monologues (that would be really out of place in this kind of play). It's a play that is set in a specific time and place, so it was important to recreate this- she did. In that sense there is a really natural feeling to the play.

The dialogues were really good, the conversation in the play sounded very natural. The characters for most part were well developed. Female characters were more convincing than males ones but that almost always happens with writers. (Women create better female characters and vice versa, very few writers escape this predicament from what I've noticed. How many writers can you think of that are portray the psyche of both genres perfectly?)

What bothered me a little bit was that I felt some of things that happen in the play were unrealistic, especially in the area of character development. Nevertheless, it is one of my favourite plays. It addresses important issues and its message is candid and important. It was a play in which I really sympathized with the characters- in particular with the female ones. For instance I just loved Mama( the matriarch of the family). She is the kind of character that just warms my heart.

After reading it, I felt more hopeful, encouraged- something like that- and that's a good feeling to experience.

In 1959, 29 year old Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun, which went on to become "one of a handful of great American plays." Five years later she would succumb to cancer but not before Raisin penetrated the upper echelon of American plays. What is remarkable about Hansberry's rise to stardom is that she was virtually unknown and African American at a time when African Americans were just starting to make gains in society. And yet Raisin made to Broadway and television, cementing its place as a classic American play.

The year is sometime between World War II and 1959, when Hansberry first produced this play. The Younger family of Chicago's south side has lived in a two flat apartment for as long as they can remember. Upon the death of the family's patriarch Big Walter, Mama Lena stands to gain $10,000 in life insurance money. At the time, this was a considerable sum of money, and Mama desired to use it fulfill the American dream- buy a house, put her daughter through college, invest in her son's business plans. Yet, things do not go according to plan.

Hansberry has created memorable characters in Mama, her daughter Beneatha, son Walter Lee, and daughter-in-law Ruth. Beneatha represents the new black woman, attempting to finish medical school at a time when few blacks or women became doctors. She also was enticed by the back to Africa movement popular at the time even though her family believed her to have a brighter future in America. Meanwhile, Walter Lee dreams of starting a chain of businesses and moving up in the world so that his children could have a brighter future than the life he and has parents have lived. His wife Ruth shares those dreams to a certain extent and like any family there is tension between the couple, which Hansberry pens eloquently.

Hansberry touches on the racial prejudices still prevalent even in northern cities in the years between Jackie Robinson integrating baseball and the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Whites torched blacks' properties, paid them not to move into their neighborhoods, or started the white flight movement. The Youngers want to fulfill the American dream that had been absent to them in their years as slaves, sharecroppers, chauffeurs, and maids. Their white would-be neighbors want to do all in their power to prevent this from happening. Hansberry's words ring out today as much as they did in 1959. The tensions had be captivated to find out the denouement and must have been even more powerful on stage, with gifted actors as Esther Rolle as Mama and Sidney Poitier as Walter Lee. Yet, these words still are poignant when read in book form these 57 years later.

Lorraine Hansberry penetrated the inner circle of American playwrights at a time when African Americans had a select few role models to look up to. Her play is still discussed in schools as a lesson in race relations and tolerance to all people. In a short five years between Raisin's debut and her untimely death, she penned three more plays as well as memoirs, which had been released posthumously. I rate Hansberry's everlasting contribution to American play writing, A Raisin in the Sun, 5 bright stars. I look forward to reading her other plays.

It is my first time reading on housing crisis and justice. This pioneering work by African American playwright L. Hansberry is a touching play about a black family in 60s Chicago, where mama matriarch (widowed to a labourer) tries to change their living situation from a soul crushing ghetto to something more than a “nicer house”. It takes the form of resistance and will to integrate despite racism, housing pattern taboos, threats and the fine line that is between hope and despair. It is about identity and justice. It is about buying a house with their flesh before their soul truly dies. It is resistance to not just racism but also against their own dying spirits. In strangest ways, it gives you hope and strength, despite the view of an uncertain future. It’s also about mother’s love. It’s raw and touching.

For a play vs. movie review please visit my blog ...On The Shelf

The thing about classics of any kind is that you never know what you’re going to get when you read or watch them. You can look up all the reviews you want, but until you’ve cracked open the book or movie for yourself you can’t be sure if any classic is right for you....

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

Description: 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".*

* I also like the remake of this song by Bob & Marcia - the days of school discos.

➥ 4 Stars *:･ﾟ✧

MAMA: Now - you say after me, in my mother's house there is still God. (There is a long pause and Beneatha stares at the floor wordlessly. Mama repeats the phrase with precision and cool emotion.) In my mother's house there is still God.
BENEATHA: In my mother's house there is still God.

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Not bad for the first book of the year. I have been reading it since November though, oops. But seriously, this book was greatly insightful and refreshing. I'm so grateful for my course consisting of diverse reads such as this one. Arguably, who am I to say or be able to tell, but the authenticity of this novel is almost palpable.

Race is a great aspect of the novel, as we see how racial and (by extension) financial issues strain family relationships. I particularly took a liking to Beneatha, a girl I see myself in greatly despite not having gone through her hardships. She was ahead of her time, caring little for marriage, eurocentric beauty standards and Christianity.

I look forward to reading other's commentary and criticism of this play, as it's one that's overall very insightful. Even small things, like the way Ruth (the wife) had told her child that he cannot do or buy something because of genuine financial difficulty at the time, yet Walter (her husband) would immediately contradict her, and give his son even a little more money. This is a sickening dynamic to have in a household, where the mother is the bad guy and the dad is the fun parent. Especially considering that their child is a boy, the alignment and downright preference for his father is just heartbreaking to see, because the child sees less and less of what his mother does for him. Yet, when the world becomes too much, the child will ultimately confide and seek comfort with his mother. It's twisted and it's accuracy of the depiction shocked me. I wasn't expecting to see this play almost casually portray this issue that is so relatable for me.

I don't have anything very important to comment on this piece. I suppose the one or two things I could criticise could be the grandmother's insistence that her son ""step up and become a man"" after his father died. There's no sense in being that perfectionist, especially when Hansberry was actually nailing the realism for how no household is perfect, but I did overall notice the brushing off of misogyny and the patriarchal household is very much prevalent.

Still, that does not take away from this play's achievement and importance. It's so ...refreshing (?) to read a text about racism that is explored by a person of colour. Yes, I've read many in the past for school, that were texts on racism written by someone that just cannot have the full perspective and understanding.

Moreover, I do tend to struggle with enjoying plays. Sure, some have some banger lines but generally, I don't see many very human or realistic details, as it's usually...theatrical duh. But I liked how the family dynamics were just so thoroughly explored, simply through following their dialogue.

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