The Raisin in the Sun

by Lorraine Hansberry Lit Crit by Vahan Hartooni



=Biography of Lorraine Hansberry= This is the biography of Lorraine Hansberry, were her famous A Raisin in the Sun play made her the first female Black person to be successful in Broadway. Her play won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and became a classic. Sadly she died to soon before accomplishing all her dreams. Yet her legacy has taught us about discrimination, abortion, and Africa. Her unfinished work Les Blancs showed how much she supported African liberation and the country itself. Hansberry was born on 1 930 in Chicago, her father was a broker and her parents were Republicans who were politically active. She was the last-born child of Carl and Nannie Perry Hansberry, who were her parents. Upon her birth certificates, Hansberry’s parents crossed out Negro to Black to pass on the Afrocentric ideology to her. Hansberry’s based the book on her life, like when the Younger’s tried to buy a house in a white neighborhood, it was based on the time when Hansberry’s family bought a house in a white neighborhood and were visited one night by a mob of racists. Lorraine was considered “rich�? in Chicago and never was comfortable of who she was. She put keys around her neck to feel like the poor black children on the streets. Hansberry never lived like the Younger family; she lived in a middle class home. Yet she knew all too well of how poor black families lived in Chicago. Hansberry’s parents always fought to end segregation, so they took her to a public school instead of a private one. Her dad established one of the first black savings banks in the city of Chicago. Hansberry’s father, whom name was Carl, fought in the Supreme Court to purchase a home in an area where whites lived for his real-estate business. Many times Hansberry’s family had a brush with death when racist mobs tried to hurt and maybe, but definitely, tried to kill her family. Later in her life, Hansberry married in 1953; she married a Jewish-Lit student named Robert Nemiroff. She was at the University of Wisconsin were she stayed for four years when she became more interested in art (Hansberry at first wanted to stay at the University for two years.) Hansberry’s drawings were considered worthy just like her writing. Hansberry worked as staff in the magazine called Freedom. Hansberry’s play’s cause and effect begins with the action of Big Walter, whom the audience never sees. Mr. Jacob likes large man cock.