Lorraine Hansberry The Life Behind A Raisin In The Sun

Download or read book Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun written by Charles J. Shields and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The moving story of the life of the woman behind A Raisin in the Sun, the most widely anthologized, read, and performed play of the American stage, by the New York Times bestselling author of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee Written when she was just twenty-eight, Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark A Raisin in the Sun is listed by the National Theatre as one of the hundred most significant works of the twentieth century. Hansberry was the first Black woman to have a play performed on Broadway, and the first Black and youngest American playwright to win a New York Critics’ Circle Award. Charles J. Shields’s authoritative biography of one of the twentieth century’s most admired playwrights examines the parts of Lorraine Hansberry’s life that have escaped public knowledge: the influence of her upper-class background, her fight for peace and nuclear disarmament, the reason why she embraced Communism during the Cold War, and her dependence on her white husband—her best friend, critic, and promoter. Many of the identity issues about class, sexuality, and race that she struggled with are relevant and urgent today. This dramatic telling of a passionate life—a very American life through self-reinvention—uses previously unpublished interviews with close friends in politics and theater, privately held correspondence, and deep research to reconcile old mysteries and raise new questions about a life not fully described until now.

Download or read book A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry and published by . This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Raisin in the Sun" reflects Lorraine Hansberry's childhood experiences in segregated Chicago. This electrifying masterpiece has enthralled audiences and has been heaped with critical accolades. "The play that changed American theatre forever" - The New York Times. Edition Description

Download or read book Looking for Lorraine written by Imani Perry and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2019 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction Winner of the Shilts-Grahn Triangle Award for Lesbian Nonfiction Winner of the 2019 Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 A revealing portrait of one of the most gifted and charismatic, yet least understood, Black artists and intellectuals of the twentieth century. Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work—until now. In 2018, Hansberry will get the recognition she deserves with the PBS American Masters documentary “Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart” and Imani Perry’s multi-dimensional, illuminating biography, Looking for Lorraine. After the success of A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry used her prominence in myriad ways: challenging President Kennedy and his brother to take bolder stances on Civil Rights, supporting African anti-colonial leaders, and confronting the romantic racism of the Beat poets and Village hipsters. Though she married a man, she identified as lesbian and, risking censure and the prospect of being outed, joined one of the nation’s first lesbian organizations. Hansberry associated with many activists, writers, and musicians, including Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, among others. Looking for Lorraine is a powerful insight into Hansberry’s extraordinary life—a life that was tragically cut far too short. A Black Caucus of the American Library Association Honor Book for Nonfiction A 2019 Pauli Murray Book Prize Finalist

Download or read book A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-02 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Never before, in the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of Black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. This edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry's landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff. Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of Black America—and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun." "The events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun," said The New York Times. "It is as if history is conspiring to make the play a classic."

Download or read book Radical Vision written by Soyica Diggs Colbert and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A captivating portrait of Lorraine Hansberry's life, art, and political activism--one of O Magazine's best books of April 2021 "Hits the mark as a fresh and timely portrait of an influential playwright."--Publishers Weekly In this biography of Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965), the author of A Raisin in the Sun, Soyica Diggs Colbert considers the playwright's life at the intersection of art and politics, with the theater operating as a "rehearsal room for [her] political and intellectual work." Colbert argues that the success of Raisin overshadows Hansberry's other contributions, including the writer's innovative journalism and lesser known plays touching on controversial issues such as slavery, interracial communities, and black freedom movements. Colbert also details Hansberry's unique involvement in the black freedom struggles during the Cold War and the early civil rights movement, in order to paint a full portrait of her life and impact. Drawing from Hansberry's papers, speeches, and interviews, this book presents its subject as both a playwright and a political activist. It also reveals a new perspective on the roles of black women in mid-twentieth-century political movements.

Download or read book Raisin written by Judd Woldin and published by Samuel French, Inc.. This book was released on 1978 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Musical Drama / 9m, 6f, chorus and extras / Unit set This winner of Tony and Grammy awards as Best Musical ran for three years on Broadway and enjoyed a record breaking national tour. A proud family's quest for a better life meets conflicts that span three generations and set the stage for a drama rich in emotion and laughter. Taking place on Chicago's Southside, it explodes in song, dance, drama and comedy. "Pure magic ... dazzling! Tremen

Download or read book Lorraine Hansberry's The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window written by Lorraine Hansberry and published by Samuel French, Inc.. This book was released on 1986 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the probing, hilarious and provocative story of Sidney, a disenchanted Greenwich Village intellectual, his wife Iris, an aspiring actress, and their colorful circle of friends and relations. Set against the shenanigans of a stormy political campaign, the play follows its characters in their unorthodox quests for meaningful lives in an age of corruption, alienation and cynicism. With compassion, humor and poignancy, the author examines questions concerning the fragility of love, morality and ethics, interracial relationships, drugs, rebellion, conformity and especially withdrawal from or commitment to the world.