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Black Women In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

714 Words3 Pages

Introduction
Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” led a great quest for the Younger household. Raisin is set in subsidized housing in Southside Chicago, in which three Black female relatives live and interact with their brother, husband, and son Walter. African Americans were frowned upon before the writing of “A Raisin in the Sun”. However, it her notorious story provided individuals of multiple races new hope for life. In 2006, Diana Adesola Mafe provided the world with her opinion of “A Raisin in the Sun”. Diana Adeolsa Mafe wrote an article and named it “Black Women on Broadway: The Duality of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun and Ntozake Shange's for colored girl” (Mafe, 2006). In addition to Lorraine Hansberry and Diana Adesola Mafe, other African American women confronted these issues in the 1950s among the uncontained political division and Civil Rights efforts to resolve conflict.

What’s the reason for appeal? Diana Adeolsa Mafe addresses the questions the following questions: What made the plays of Lorraine’s play so appealing to the audience? Can these theatrical representations of "ethnic" culture be "authentic “if they are also read as "universal"? The plays of Lorraine and Diana were criticized by content in their plays as either one or the other, rendering the "universal" and the "specific" mutually limited, she …show more content…

The author’s plays theorize constructive models of "universal" femininity. The some of the critics label “A Raisin in the Sun” as an "American classic" either because of its American-ness or because of its African American-ness. I believe that the play was considered an American classic because Lorraine Hansberry brought light to the everyday struggles that African Americans suffered due to their race. In the past, many African Americans wanted better future; consequently, they were profited by some Caucasians due to

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The play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry debuted on Broadway in 1959, and the movie was made in 2008. “A Raisin in the Sun” is about the Younger family, the fifth generation of lower-class African-Americans living in Chicago’s Southside. They are faced with problems such as racial discrimination, poverty, and conflicting dreams. As the family decides on how to spend the insurance check of $10,000 from Walter’s father’s death, these problems cause many conflicts to rise. Reading the 1959 play and the 2008 movie, I have realized certain similarities and differences in how the story plays out.

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In the play Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry takes place on the southside of Chicago where Walter and his family are racially profiled and show us how the survive throughout their struggles. The central struggles for the younger family in their search for the American dream is mostly poverty and being racially profiled against for their actions. Hansberry challenges the traditional gender roles and issues of dominance throughout the play when Mama gives Walter lee the rest of the money at the end of the play. He becomes all excited and was supposed to save some for himself and put the rest of the money to Beneatha 's education. Instead, he gave all that money to Willy another character in the play which later on that he stole from him.

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“A Raisin in the Sun,” written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959, was the first play ever produced on Broadway by an African-American woman and was considered ground-breaking for it’s time. Titled after Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” sometimes known as “A Dream Deferred,” the play and the subsequent film adaptations are honest examinations of race, family, poverty, discrimination, oppression and even abortion in urban Chicago after WWII. The original play was met with critical praise, including a review by Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times where he wrote, “For A Raisin in the Sun is a play about human beings who want, on the one hand, to preserve their family pride and, on the other hand, to break out of the poverty that seems to be their fate. Not having any axe to grind, Miss Hansberry has a wide range of topics to write about-some of them hilarious, some of them painful in the extreme.” The original screen adaptation released in 1961 was highly acclaimed in its own right, and was chosen in 2005 for preservation in the United States of America National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for its cultural and historical significance.

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The racism and sexism being shown in the Raisin in The Sun demonstrates that the matrix of domination is in play. In the book, Beneatha is an African-American woman who is battling not only racism, but also sexism. She battles racism by attending medical school during the civil right movement era and she battles sexism at home with her brother Walter, and being told to marry George Murchison. In the text Walter says “We one group of men are tied to a race of women with small minds” (Hansberry, 35). In this quote he not only degrades the woman, but he degrades the African American woman.

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A Raisin In The Sun Feminist Analysis

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Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun presents the rise of feminism in America in the 1960s. Beneatha Younger, Lena Younger (Mama) and Ruth Younger are the three primary characters displaying evidences of feminism in the play. Moreover, Hansberry creates male characters who demonstrate oppressive attitudes towards women yet enhance the feministic ideology in the play. A Raisin in the Sun is feminist because, with the feminist notions displayed in the play, women can fulfil their individual dreams that are not in sync with traditional conventions of that time.

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A Raisin in the Sun addresses major social issues such as racism and feminism which were common in the twentieth century. The author, Lorraine Hansberry, was the first playwright to produce a play that portrayed problematic social issues. Racism and gender equality are heavily addressed throughout the play. Even though we still have these issues today, in the 1950’s and 60’s the issues had a greater part in society. Racism and gender have always been an issue in society, A Raisin in the Sun is an important piece of American history during that time period.

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A Raisin In The Sun Critical Analysis

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There is a barely recognizable difference between the mistreatment of an individuals and the opression of their specialty. Time, not the critics or Black screenwriter, might unavoidably offer African-American writers the break they need, which is the honest to goodness flexibility to pick unlimited methods and subjects without needing to feel contrite about either being into Black or not sufficiently black, or of being excessively female or not sufficiently ladylike. What's more, this does not promptly propose a yearning for coordination where the African-American theater "is enticed to regard the traditions and traditions it defies. Some of great authors have examined her novel as "Negro dramatization,". Hansberry focuses out the play can be "about anybody"; she had a place with the school of however which trusts that "keeping in mind the end goal to make the widespread, you must give careful consideration to the specifi".

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Through the use of the historical lens, looking specifically at the economic struggles, the struggle of unequal opportunity, and the housing covenant that African-American’s faced in the 1950’s, Hansberry’s message of A Raisin in the Sun is revealed: the perseverance of an ethnic minority in a time of racial discrimination. A Raisin in the Sun is set in a time of great racial discrimination, the 1950’s in the united States. This featured racism towards those of color or non-caucasians, and the struggles commonly faced by the African-American family is shown through the eyes of the Younger family through the writing and experiences of Lorraine Hansberry. Of the three major struggles the Younger family faced, the most prominent in Act one is that of financial disability. This is best shown through the working lives of the family.

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Reader Response: 3 “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, is a play about a black families experience in 1950s South Side Chicago. The story revolves around what happens to the family when Lena Younger, the matriarch of the family, receives a ten thousand dollar life insurance check upon the death of her husband. Everyone from the family has different plans for what they want to do with the money. Lena Younger serves as the head of the family. She is Walter and Beneatha’s caring mother so they and Ruth call her Mama.

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Just within the recent decades, men and women started to fight against the gender stereotypes and started to challenge their roles in a family and in the society. The play, A Raisin in the Sun, portrays the lives of African–Americans during the 1950s. Lorraine Hansberry, a writer and a social activist, reinforced the traditional gender roles, especially female’s, by depicting how the Youngers interact and how they act in an economical struggle. Throughout the play, A Raisin in the Sun, she uses Walter Lee Younger, Ruth Younger and Lena Younger to reinforce the traditional role of fathers, wives and mothers within a family.

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