I've always wanted to read this book but I had never really gotten around to it so I finally gave it a try. I also wanted to read this book because I had recently read other plays that I really enjoyed. The writing element that I liked most about this book is the diction and the way the character's spoke because the readers get a good insight on that time period. There were many different events that shock the reader which made me want to continuously read and the author presents an African-American family which face many struggles. The author does a wonderful job describing how African-Americans had different rights and were treated with very little to no respect. I would recommend anyone to read this book and I would like to read another book by this author.

3.5

This book wasn't the best book I've read but it was pretty good. It tells a story of a struggling black family with economic problems and family problems. I don't remember the whole story, however, i do remember big mama's strive to never fail and move out of that nasty apartment and find a wonderful house that she can call home for her family.

A great play that raises awareness about the racial dynamics of the recent past of the United States.

This book was about a family going through racism and poverty. It was sad to see what the family was going through. I found Beneatha the most compelling. She was so independent and unique. I don't understand why Walter was so against her becoming a doctor. Becoming a doctor was something that could prove something different about colored woman.

This was an awesome book. It shows how people are when it comes to different races. I love how the characters are just so real and up front with how they feel. They show how they are proud of their race and dont let others try to bring them down. This book just shows compassionate and caring to others. There is one thing I hated, how the older guy in the family spent the rest of the money on trying to start a liquor store. It was the most dumbest thing someone can do is give alot of money to someone they barly know.

This rating is specifically for The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window.

Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if Hansberry had lived long enough to grow comfortable with her lesbian identity (which yes, we know for a fact now based on her journals and anonymous letters that she sent to the Daughters of Bilitis). In particular, I wonder how queer representation in her work would've changed. Based on the character David, her early creative interest in queer sexualities was, as David might say, "clinical." It would've been cool to see her reach the same level of self-acceptance as Alice Walker, Ann Allen Shockley, or Alison Bechdel. Alas.

BLAH!!!

Hansberry definitely had its great points, and is a true novel of its time period. Although I did not like some points made, the book was pretty good.

I believed that this was a very interesting play due to the optimism that the characters show. This is one of the best plays I've read. Throughout the play the characters never lose the hope they ave for their dreams. The never give up, instead they keep their head up and keep moving forward.

I just finished "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window", but figured that since I also recently also finished "A Raisin in the Sun" in this very edition that I might as well add this edition in my collection.

...

I recently reviewed a Raisin in the Sun, as a play. I loved it. But Sidney Brustein just did something to me that I can't rightly explain. I think what's making me so breathless right now is the fact that Lorraine is gone...and this is rightly, her last finished play. There shall be no more of this kind of work ever produced because Lorraine is gone. I say that not to imbue you all with his fake sense of intimacy (obviously didn't know Lorraine, duh). I just mean that often one falls back on "oh I can't wait to read dada by this author because this was so good" but other than a few manuscripts and another (unfinished) play, all I have to take away from this play, is this play and Raisin of course. But that's it.

Sidney is perhaps one of the rare plays written by a black, lesbian woman playwright about majority white characters. That's rare of course, because it's usually the opposite (if anything) in some capacity. That is, white writers are usually writing about us -us, as in black women and people of color in general. I think about that sometimes, about why and what it mean if a black person flipped the switch and even wrote about something unpolitical, about white people. Would it even matter, then, that it was a black writer at all? Would they be pictureless, like Nayyirah Waheed maybe? Well anyway, but Sidney is not just a white play written by a black writer. Sidney is a play of fatalistic intent. I think that's the best way to put it. There are also absurdist elements in it. I say that with relative causality because the whole play is making fun of its characters of sorts. I think the play is rather self consciously aware that the characters are -or can be perceived- as caricatures and therefore, makes constant efforts to twist the characters away from what you think they will be.

So in the case of Iris, the wife of the title character, she can be predictably a young-ish wife that's been stifled by her overly idealistic and obnoxious husband and eventually runs away to live out her potential and dream big. But you knew all that already as soon as you opened the play. And Lorraine fights back against your predictions. She doesn't turn Iris or any of the other characters into merely things to be representative of sociological realities. They are -as they are in Raisin- real people, or at least as real as characters can be. I think that what I like most about this play is that there is something tragic about every line uttered, and yet it happens to be pretty funny sometimes. There's something about Hansberry's style of writing that evokes a true sense of life, even if at times Sidney in particular can be heavy with metaphor and monologue...that's pretty true to life too, let's admit it.

Overall, I lied. There is something that I can take away from this play other than my reading of it in this current moment and that is, I will hope to read this play again some time in the near future because like Raisin it probably only gets better with age.

I am really expecting this book to be good, so ill keep on reading