Lorraine Hansberry

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Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930January 12, 1965) was an American playwright and painter. Her drama A Raisin in the Sun (first performed in 1959) was the first drama written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway, and was the winner of the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best Broadway play of the 1958-1959 season. In 2004, A Raisin in the Sun received a Broadway revival earning Tony Awards for Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald. Hansberry grew up on the South Side of Chicago, in the neighborhood of Woodlawn.

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Biography

Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago in 1930, the youngest child of Carl and Nannie Perry Hansberry. Her parents were politically active Republicans who bequeathed their Afrocentric ideology to their daughter. (At The Time, A Majority of Blacks Voted Republican) Her father was a real estate broker.

Hansberry grew up in a white, middle-class neighborhood and attended public school. Her family frequently faced the threats of racist mobs.

Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin and worked on the staff of Freedom magazine. She married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish literature student, in 1953. They separated in 1957. Hansberry wrote articles for "The Ladder," the first lesbian publication in the United States.

Her 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun made her the first black woman to win the New York Drama Critics' Circle's Best Play award. The play has become a classic.

Hansberry died of cancer on January 12, 1965 at the age of thirty-four. "The Sign in Sydney Brustein's Window" ran for 101 perormances on Broadway and closed the night she died. Her ex-husband Robert Nemiroff became the literary executor of several of her unfinished works, most notably his adaptation of her writings into the play, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which was the longest-running Off-Broadway play of the 1968-1969 season. It appeared in book form the following year under the title, To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. She left behind an unfinished novel and three (also unfinished) plays.

Legacy

After her success with A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry became the foremother of Black American drama and many who followed felt a great debt to her vision. She also contributed to the understanding of abortion, discrimination, and Africa. In San Francisco, The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, which specializes in original stagings and revivals of African-American theatre, is named in honor of her great contributions.

Her Works

Bibliography

James, Rosetta. Cliff Notes on Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Lincoln, Nebraska: Cliff Notes Inc, 1992
Lorraine Hansberry (1930 - 1965)” http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/corhans.htm 2003


See also

External links

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