Both poet Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry thought this was ridiculous they felt that writing about lower class African-Americans would actually debunk the stereotypes. Previously, black intellectuals did not use literature, art, or the stage to portray working-class African-Americans for fear they would perpetuate undesirable stereotypes. One last note: A Raisin in the Sun is part of broader shift in black art towards depicting working-class, ordinary African-Africans. Beneatha embodies both movements before they ever existed. The play opened in 1959, remember, which is before all the feminists started demanding their rights, and before black Americans began embracing Africa as part of their identity.
A character like Beneatha, however, is way ahead of her time. Americans were only beginning to address these inequalities at the time Hansberry was writing, and she did a great job at capturing the mood of her time through only one family.Īs discussed in the "What's Up with the Epigraph?" section, the Younger family's fulfillment/non-fulfillment of their dreams mirrors how black Americans as a whole had gained some concessions while still being oppressed in other respects. When Americans fought in World War II, they were fighting to uphold equality for all.which exposed the hypocrisy of the very unequal conditions for blacks back home. The play's setting covers a pivotal time period for race relations in America - after WWII and before 1959. What makes Hansberry's writing remarkable is not only her accuracy in capturing the racial dynamics of her time, but her foresight in predicting the direction black culture would take in subsequent years. It was an immediate success, however, and after several tours, it opened on Broadway, making it the first-ever Broadway play written by an African-American woman. With only one white cast member, an inexperienced director, and an untried playwright, Hansberry had difficulty finding financial backing for the play at a time when theater audiences were overwhelmingly white. On the face of it, A Raisin in the Sun was not destined for success. In A Nutshell A Raisin in the Sun, written by Lorraine Hansberry and produced on stage in 1959, marks a watershed moment in American theater. TERMS IN THIS SET (18) A RAISIN IN THE SUN INTRODUCTION
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