Hansberry\'s Raisin in the Sun

¶ … Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun

Raisin in the Sun is the most well-known and successful play written by Lorraine Hansberry, who died tragically young of pancreatic cancer in 1965 at the age of 34 (SocialJusticeWiki). The play was groundbreaking in many ways -- it was the first play produced on Broadway written by an African-American female, and the first directed by an African-American director since 1907 (Social Justice Wiki). In breaking down these barriers, Hansberry was following in the tradition she had learned from her parents since the time of her birth. Her parents were hugely active in the struggle for equal rights, and figures like Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois, and Langston Hughes often came to her parents' house (Voices from the Gap). But it is not just details of Hansberry's adult life that seem inspired by her upbringing, but there are even strong elements of biography in her plays and other writings. Being at the center of the struggle for African-American rights, and specifically her family's move to an all-white neighborhood whil she was still young, had a very large impact on shaping Hansberry's literary works, especially Raisin in the Sun. In this play, certain aspects of Lorraine Hansberry's family life and details of her life are the basis for this work, which examines the breakdown -- or perhaps the strength -- of a family on the edge.

Lorraine Hansberry was born to Carl Augustus Hansberyy and Nannie Louise Perry on May 19, 1930, the fourth child in the middle-class African-American family in Chicago, Illinois (Wikipedia). Both of her parents were activists against segregation and other discriminations, and they moved to an all-white neighborhood that tried to keep them out via the court system, leading to the Supreme Court Decision Hansberry v. Lee, which allowed them to stay in their home (SocialJusticeWiki). They also sent Lorraine to public schools, where they were fighting segregation, rather than to the private schools they could afford (SocialJusticeWiki). She dropped out of the University of Wisconsin and moved to New York City to become a writer, where she made use of some of her father's connections and found both work and instruction through them (SocialJusticeWiki). In 1959, Raisin in the Sun was produced on Broadway and was an instant hit (Wikipedia). The 1961 movie version, also penned by Hansberry, was well received, but was her last success -- she died of cancer in 1965 (Wikipedia).

The connections between her life and play are very strong, though she did not merely write scenes from her life onto the page as she remembered them. Her family's economic situation was actually nothing like the Younger's in the play; her father was a well-off real estate broker, inventor, and political activist who even ran for Congress, which is a far cry from the servile position of chauffeur that Walter Lee Younger has (SocialJusticeWiki). It is not the situation, but rather the desires of her parents and herself that are transferred to her characters somewhat tragically, as they seem doomed to fail. Walter's assertion to his son that some day they'll be rich and "Whatever you want to be -- Yessir! You just name it, son... And I hand you the world!" echoes every parents' desire for their children, but in this story this dream is barred, or at least hindered, by very real racial and economic barriers (Raisin in the Sun, Act II, scene 2).

Hansberry dealt with these racial issues all her life, and remembers the white neighborhood of Chicago to which her family moved as being "hellishly hostile" (Wikipedia). The reader never sees the Younger family after their move, but there is not a lot of hope that it will be an easy transition for them. Mr. Lindner, a white man from that neighborhood, has already come by and offered to buy the house from them for a generous amount of money. This is similar to the specifics of the legal case that Hansberry's father became engaged in over their house in an all white neighborhood. In the real-life version of events, however, things were far less polite. Hansberry's father was actually breaking a legal covenant between property owners of the area that they would not sell to African-Americans, and Carl Hansberry was actually sued for $100,000 -- a huge sum of money in 1937 (and not bad now) (SocialJusticeWiki). Hansberry countersued, claiming that the covenant had denied him his right to be heard, and the Supreme Court agreed, allowing his family to stay in their home on a legal technicality, but not ending the discriminatory covenant (SocialJusticeWiki). In the case of the Youngers, Walter is given a temptation of money, and his ultimate refusal of it -- " We don't want to make no trouble for nobody or fight no causes, and we will try to be good neighbors. And that's all we got to say about that. We don't want your money" -- signals his transformation to true father and family leader, a transformation that would not have been possible had Hansberry kept the story closer to her own life (Raisin, III, 1).