A short life of the author
Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965) was born on 19 May 1930 in Chicago. Her family challenged housing segregation when she was a child — their legal case, Hansberry v. Lee, went to the Supreme Court in 1940.
Life and Career
A Raisin in the Sun (1959) — about the Younger family, a Black family on Chicago’s South Side who receive a $10,000 life insurance check and must decide how to use it — opened on Broadway with Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, and Claudia McNeil. It was the first play by a Black woman produced on Broadway and won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, beating out plays by Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and Archibald MacLeish.
The play’s title comes from Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem” (“What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?”). It addresses race, class, family, and the American Dream with a directness and humanity that made it a landmark.
Hansberry’s second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window (1964), closed the night she died of pancreatic cancer at thirty-four. To Be Young, Gifted and Black (1969) — assembled from her writings by Robert Nemiroff — was published posthumously.
Major Works and Themes
Hansberry wrote about race, justice, family, and the American Dream. She was a political radical — a lesbian, a supporter of African independence movements, and a friend of James Baldwin — whose work was more revolutionary than its mainstream acceptance sometimes suggested.
Key Works
- A Raisin in the Sun (1959)
Collecting Hansberry
A Raisin in the Sun first edition (Random House, 1959) in fine condition with dust jacket brings $500–$1,500. Hansberry died in 1965 at thirty-four — her entire published output is small, making all items scarce.