A Raisin in the Sun

Lorraine Hansberry's dramatic play, A Raisin in the Sun, is about the life of an African-American family living on the South Side of Chicago in the years following the Second World War. Lena Younger (Mama) is the head of the family that includes her married son Walter Lee, his wife, Ruth, their young son, Travis and Walter's younger sister, Beneatha, who is a college student. The family is struggling to support itself. Walter Lee works as a chauffer, and Ruth and even Mama work to bring in enough money. They leave in a run-down apartment and even have to share the bathroom with other tenants.

Lena's husband has died and she is about to get an insurance check for $10,000, a lot of money for those times. Everyone in the family has a dream for a better life. Walter Lee wants to buy a liquor store, Mama wants to have a house with a garden, Beneatha wants to become a doctor and Ruth just wants everyone to be happy and content. The check arrives and the drama plays out against a backdrop of racial prejudice.

This play was the first drama featuring an African-American theme to play on Broadway. It has been highly acclaimed ever since. It shows basically decent people struggling against life's difficulties. It is particularly relevant now, given the recent election of an African-American (not co-incidentally from Chicago) as president of the United States. For that reason I give it five stars.

I loved this book! I saw the movie, but the book goes into much more detail. It's amazing how you don't recognize the littlest things but they make such a big difference.

Lorraine Hansberry's famous play offers raw and realistic drama. The story examines conflicts and dreams within an African American family from Chicago's South Side in the 1950's, plus the effects of racism. The family includes Walter and Ruth Younger, his widowed mother Lena, son Travis, and sister Beneatha. Walter is a hard-working chauffeur who dreams of buying a liqour store before he loses his money to a con artist. Beneatha is an ambitious college student newly attracted to the back-to-Africa philosophy of her Nigerian friend, while Lena and Ruth dream of escaping their slum and buying a house in a better area. That latter dream becomes reality via the life insurance from Lena's late husband. Lena purchases a house in a better area, at which point the all-white neighborhood tries to pay off the Youngers to keep them from moving in. We see the family separate with the expected insurance settlement, only to reunite when faced with rejection.

This drama presents potent trends like resistance to integration, pan-Africanism, and militancy, but never becomes soapy or preachy. This play was first performed in 1959, as Chicago's South Side was fast turning from white to black - integration being defined by neighborhood activist Saul Alinsky as that brief period of time between when the first black family moves in and the last white family leaves. Sadly, several once-stable neighborhoods became crime-ridden slums, and cancer took Ms. Hansberry (1930-1965) at just 34. Still, her raw, realistic drama provides a powerful testament.

I had to read this book for my senior AP english class and I was quite stunned when I realized that I actually liked it. I like to read, but not usually the books the teachers assign, and the other two books she had assigned turned out to not be all that good. I liked a Raisin in the Sun because it had just the right mix of drama, and humor. Lorraine Hansberry really knows when the drama has become too much and she adds in a little bit of humor like any great author would. I really liked the characters, especially Beneathea who I found to be especially poignant and humorous. This book did not have a greatly detailed plot, but it made up for it in the way it was presented. It wasn't supposed to be an adventure novel, so I wasn't looking for a whole lot of plot twists. I also liked the message it sent.

It is a nice book. The characters personalities made the book good. If the characters were changed the book wouldn't be as good. The story shows the life of a black family in Chicago and their struggles through the years they lived there.