How much has actually changed since 1959? I wish this play had a sequel...

Wow - I really loved this! Hope to be able to find a way to watch the screen adaptation of it next.

loved it. I really want to go see this play at the Harlem theatre.

یه نمایشنامه معمولی. البته جز نمایش‌نامه‌های بزرگ در ادبیات سیاهان محسوب می‌شه اما چیز خیلی عجیبی نبود.
کشش داشت و شخصیت‌پردازی‌های خوبی داشت اما پی‌رنگ پیچیده یا خیلی منحصر به فردی نداشت.
اما طوری نبود که خسته بشی حین خوندنش. دیالوگ‌ها هم فکر کنم خوب نوشته شده بودن و حرف‌های هرز نداشت.

چیزی که توش خیلی خوب بود -و برای خواننده ایرانی چیز معمولی‌ای هست- این بود که به خیلی از مسائل سیاهان پرداخته بود و می‌شه گفت یه بازنمایی جامع از زندگی سیاهان بود.
برای همین نمایشنامه بزرگی بود ولی برای خواننده ایرانی مسائل اونقدر دارای همذات پنداری نبودن.

This will always be my favorite stage play

Read this bitch for school. When I tell u this book had no plot whatsoever. The essay I had to write made me want to die. Don’t talk to be ab this book ever again.

Lorraine Hansberry’s play about a family (Mama, her daughter Beneatha, and her son Walter with his wife Ruth and son Travis) in racially segregated Chicago in 1959 raises many issues that are still highly relevant today. The story takes place in their current apartment and the well fleshed out characters struggle
- with finances (“MAMA: Now don’t act silly… We ain’t never been no people to act silly ‘bout no money – RUTH: We ain’t never had none before.”),
- with their identity (“It means someone who is willing to give up his own culture and submerge himself completely in the dominant, and in this case oppressive culture!”),
- with understanding generational changes (“It’s just- you know how some of our young people gets when they get a little education.”), and
- with prejudice/racism (“MAMA: Did he threaten us? – BENEATHA: Oh- Mama- they don’t do it like that anymore. He talked Brotherhood. He said everybody ought to learn how to sit down and hate each other with good Christian fellowship.”).

I really enjoyed this short but powerful play and would like to actually see it on stage one day! Even though the writing style sometimes interrupted the flow of the story for me, I highly recommend this one! 4/5 stars

so good!!!

A Raisin in the Sun is a classic American play written by Lorraine Hansberry that depicts the black American experience of segregation through the eyes of a black family living in the southside of Chicago in the late 1950s. It is a short play in book length, but much longer in stage length (of course). The characters are memorable, struggling with an African American experience that is distinct in some ways to the white experience, and trying to find a way around the societal obstacles endemic to the time period. The story is optimistic, which points to the natural optimism of the writer, and I believe helped to ameliorate some of the impediments that might have prevented this play from getting made. IMHO, that would have been a shame. Definitely one of the best things I have read this year (2021).

For the majority of this play about a poor, Black family living in 1950’s Chicago, its characters seem profoundly and startlingly unhappy. Walter and Ruth Younger in their marriage, Walter’s mother Lena in her dismay over how her children have grown up, Walter’s sister Benethia in her confusion over her identity, or Benethia’s rich boyfriend who seems to have no interest in anything beyond increasing his own wealth all seem trapped in a world they can’t escape from. Even the one brief appearance of a White character who is clearly uncomfortable with what he has to do here, seems miserable. All are caught up in the racial attitudes of the day that despite their struggles to break free from it, are always reminded of its omnipresence. Dreams have withered on the vine for years until actions are taken which will change everything.
While I loved these characters and how real and urgent their lives seemed, they are very nearly overshadowed by Hansberry’s brilliantly constructed and claustrophobic atmosphere that pervades every page. The walls, the floors, the roaches and rats, are as prominent as any character. We are constantly drawn back to them as a reminded of the physical and mental squalor generations of this family have had to suffer. It drives Ruth, when faced with the horrifying possibility of never escaping to exclaim:

Lena—I’ll work … I’ll work twenty hours a day in all the kitchens in Chicago … I’ll strap my baby on my back if I have to and scrub all the floors in America and wash all the sheets in America if I have to—but we got to MOVE! We got to get OUT OF HERE!!

There is little in their lives they have control over but this one thing, this leaving an apartment that is the epitome of all their frustrations. The thought of losing this one final dream after so many have died before it is what drives the final act of this play and one of the more powerful scenes you are likely to ever read. This play is a masterpiece about human aspirations and dreams deferred for far too long.

I think I would like to write a paper about contentment & consumption in this play

I've only ever cried at one book in my life being 'Little Women', so its quite a feat that this moved me to the literal verge of tears. I've never felt such rage when reading something either so I'm in awe of the writing. Loved it but glad its over as it is quite the intense, emotional read.