LH
Meet the Author

Lorraine Hansberry

American · 1930–1965 · Playwright and activist

A Chicago playwright whose first play, A Raisin in the Sun, made her the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway, at 28.

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Why read Lorraine Hansberry?

A Raisin in the Sun takes place almost entirely in the Youngers’ crowded apartment on Chicago’s South Side, where the family waits for a life insurance check and argues over what to do with it. Walter Lee wants to start a business, his sister Beneatha wants to become a doctor, and their mother, Lena, wants a house with room to breathe, even in a white neighborhood that does not want them. Hansberry gives every member of the family a real case, so the arguments feel fair on all sides. The title comes from Langston Hughes’s poem Harlem, and the play takes up that poem’s question about dreams that are put off too long.

A life in six dates

  1. 1930Born in Chicago
  2. 1940The US Supreme Court rules for her father in Hansberry v. Lee, a case over the house the family bought in a white neighborhood
  3. 1950Moves to New York, where she soon writes for Freedom, Paul Robeson’s newspaper
  4. 1959A Raisin in the Sun opens on Broadway and wins the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award
  5. 1964The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window opens on Broadway
  6. 1965Dies of cancer in New York at 34
  7. 1969To Be Young, Gifted and Black, adapted from her writings, is staged in New York

Themes across the work

PlaysAmerican literatureFamily dramaThe American DreamRace and Housing

The StoryBites Editions

Context that actually matters

Restrictive covenants in ChicagoWhite property owners signed agreements not to sell or rent to Black buyers, and neighborhood groups enforced them. Hansberry’s own family fought one in court, and the Clybourne Park association in the play pursues the same end by offering to buy the Youngers out.
The title and Langston HughesHughes’s poem Harlem, from his 1951 book Montage of a Dream Deferred, supplies the play’s title, and each of the Youngers is living with a hope that has been postponed.
Broadway in 1959The original production, directed by Lloyd Richards and starring Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee, brought a Black family’s story to a mainstream Broadway audience, and a film version followed in 1961.

Reading the plays and snagging on the language? A Glossary of Common Shakespearean Words →