Credibility: While living in one of Chicago’s most known gentrified areas, Lincoln Park, and taking a Latino class at DePaul University I was able to learn about the history of the neighborhood. I learned about the battle low-income Puerto Rican families lost when trying to keep their homes in Lincoln Park. Yes, you heard correctly, Lincoln Park was a Puerto Rican neighborhood. IIII. Preview: In this speech, I will begin by explaining what gentrification is along with a short background on the Lincoln Park gentrification, then I will proceed to explain how the families in these areas fought for their homes, and finally I will be discussing the gentrification that is affecting citizens of Chicago today.
The play “ A Raisin In The Sun “ wrote by Lorraine Hansberry is a inspiring play about the Younger family. A typical African American family in the late 1950’s trying to make life better for themselves. They’re a family trying to overcome the difficulties and obstacles that comes with being black in America in that time. Obstacles such as lynchings,segregation,racial discrimination and overall the difficulties that comes with being black in America. With external problems within the family the characters also internal conflicts within themselves.
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. The famous play shows the audience the life it was like to live as a black female, and shows the struggles that the Young family faced being the first African American family to move into a white neighborhood. This play is considered a
In King’s speech he says, “We have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice” (King). This section in his speech is similar to Lena Younger’s action of cashing in her insurance check to put a down payment on a house for her family. Mama, “She went out and she bought you a house”(Hansberry 91). Cashing in the check shows that this check of reality will give African Americans an opportunity for freedom and justice especially since the Younger family is the only African American family in the Clybourne Community. Along, with a want for a better life there is a sense of hope both in King’s speech and Hansberry’s play.
Race and “The American Dream” in A Raisin in the Sun In A Raisin in the Sun the Youngers, a middle to lower working class African-American family, living in the Southside of Chicago, exhibits dreams and aspirations typically propagated by the “American Dream”. In this case they not only want to achieve financial success, but also acceptance into a white dominated society, whilst simultaneously keeping their identity. The American Dream, an almost trope like notion, heavily imbedded within the American psyche is often seen as the ultimate culmination of one’s goals. The idea and trope of the American Dream has been featured and explored in many literary works such as The Death of a Salesman and The Great Gatsby. Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is another example, where each of the characters’ lives are shaped in
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. Hansberry portrays the role of fathers within their families through her only male character in the play, Walter Lee Younger.
Kincaid states that we “cannot get over the past, cannot forgive and cannot forget” (26); therefore, Kincaid feels that the past influences the present. She wants the reader to closely analyze the historical factors of racism to shape our lives no matter our race or religion. In A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid states that racism shaped Antigua into what it is today. This is a social factor that I can relate to since I am an African American living in the South, and I have experienced racism both blatant and implicit throughout my life to allow me to reflect on the past and analyze more closely to make a better future similarly to Kincaid’s idea. In Kincaid’s A Small Place, she emphasizes how racism which was brought on by slavery, greatly impacted the lives of Antiguans.
Poems are tools used to demonstrate dissatisfaction. The play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry leads by foreshadowing its theme of crushed dreams by starting with the poem A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes. The play follows an African-American family in 1950s Chicago, consisting of protagonist Walter Lee Younger, his son Travis, his wife and Travis’ mother Ruth, sister Beneatha, and mother/grandmother Lena, called simply “Mama” in the play. Walter is ambitious and wants to move out of his small and run-down home and find a better job than a chauffeur for the kind of man he wishes he could be. Desperate to fulfill this dream, he takes $6,500 of his mother’s insurance money that she obtains shortly beforehand following the death of Walter Sr. and strikes a deal with two friends of his to purchase a liquor store.
CRITICS OF LORAINE HANSBERRY Joseph Wilson contended that "The historical backdrop of the Afro-American individuals is a mosaic woven into the history's fabric of work in America". "A Raisin in the Sun" approves this perception and assists us with comprehension the difficulties that stood up to African-American Workers in Chicago from the 1920s to the 1950s. The Play talked about the effect of work and lodging separation of the American longs for the dark populace through the experience of two eras of the more youthful gang. In making of the American Dream be a weak reality. Hughes catches the pith of the American Dream of African Americans that pundit David Jarraway articulately portrays as "the willed secret, the instability the "indeterminacy"
The setting of the Raisin in the Sun is the ghetto of Chicago, where most black families lived and most of these black families had dreams of moving to a better neighbourhood, because of crime, but the housing industry causes segregated housing and manipulates communities with white fears of black integration. When Lorraine Hansberry was a child, her family also experienced the results of a government unconcerned with blacks leaving segregation. Lorraine used her play to tell people about her own struggle with racism, her play shows us that her problems were handled with determination. Linder speaks to the Younger family and offers them money to buy their house, because they, the white people feel that a community should share a common background and that negro families are happier when they live in their own communities. This is an example of how the Younger family has experienced racism, while it is true that people with the same background will be happier together, it is also their right to live where they feel they are progressing.