A Raisin in the Sun
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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
A Raisin in the Sun: Introduction
A raisin in the sun: plot summary, a raisin in the sun: detailed summary & analysis, a raisin in the sun: themes, a raisin in the sun: quotes, a raisin in the sun: characters, a raisin in the sun: symbols, a raisin in the sun: theme wheel, brief biography of lorraine hansberry.
Historical Context of A Raisin in the Sun
Other books related to a raisin in the sun.
- Full Title: A Raisin in the Sun
- When Written: 1950s
- Where Written: New York City
- When Published: The play premiered on Broadway on March 11, 1959. Random House published the play in 1959.
- Literary Period: Social Realism
- Genre: Dramatic stage play
- Setting: Chicago’s South Side, sometime between 1945 and 1959
- Climax: Walter Lee loses the family’s insurance payment in an investment scheme.
- Antagonist: Karl Lindner and the Clybourne Park Improvement Association; racial prejudice and economic hardship
Extra Credit for A Raisin in the Sun
A Raisin in the Spotlight A Raisin in the Sun inspired several adaptations, including a Tony Award-winning musical. Partly written by the Lorraine Hansberry’s ex-husband Robert Nemiroff, after her death, Raisin added song and dance to the Youngers’ story, winning the 1973 Tony Award for Best Musical. More loosely based on the original story, the play Clybourne Park tells the story of the white family that sells its house to the Youngers. With its first act set in 1959 and its second act set in 2009, Clybourne Park tracks the development of the neighborhood and its residents over fifty years.
Mother to Son Hansberry originally titled the play, The Crystal Stair , a name that, like A Raisin in the Sun , comes from a Langston Hughes poem. The poem, called “Mother to Son,” speaks to the hardships that many African-American families have faced: “Well, son, I’ll tell you: / Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair / . . . But all the time / I’se been a-climbin’ on.”
Building educators' capacity to produce college-ready performance for all students.
Argumentalizing ‘A Raisin in the Sun’
Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun is a sturdy classic of 20th century American literature and African-American literature and history, and it deserves to be as widely taught in high school English classes as it is. We have worked with multiple partner schools on the work, and our projects have been honed through iterative implementations to focus on several debatable issues, but one in particular.
The three debatable issues that we have helped partner teachers organize their instruction around are these.
The first of these three DI’s directs student attention to characters and characterization in the play, particularly as these are used by Lorraine Hansberry to illustrate and develop the play’s concern with independence and autonomy, and how they reflect on the play’s other thematic concerns — racism, filial bonds and obligations, authentic manhood. The character binaries set up in this debatable issue lend themselves especially well to the Argument Face-Off activity.
The third focuses on the sociological and historical matter in the late 1950s and on into the 1960s of racial assimilation versus racial nationalism or separation. This became a strategic question considered by civil rights movement leaders of this period, and is one that has had residual permutations and lingering effects down through to the present moment.
But it is the second debatable issue that our partner schools have spent the most time with. It is capacious, capturing an extensive range of interpretive meaning-making that we want (typically) 9th or 10th grade students to begin to become comfortable doing, but it also seems sufficiently narrow and focused on a fundamental question Hansberry herself was grappling with, over whether or to what extent America’s racial challenges and the particular condition of American urban common folk were solvable or transcendable.
On balance, A Raisin in the Sun expresses a more optimistic than pessimistic view of the world.
We have developed a set of possible argumentative claims and counter-claims that we use with partner schools in varying ways — to present models, to give students more fully to scaffold their argument and counter-argument building, to prompt refutation activities, to assist their response to counter-arguments in their interpretive essay writing. This basic and widely applicable resource, which we use widely in our argumentalization of units and projects, helps orient instruction and assessments on academic argument. When collaboratively created with partner teachers, it also enables them to have thought through the viable arguments and counter-arguments on both sides of the debatable issue, which is essential to teach effectively using argument pedagogy.
The claims and counter-claims are aligned with the set of selected passages that we have created that can be used by students to harvest textual evidence for their interpretive arguments. Selected Passages should always be balanced between positions; so in this instance there are 10 passages that support the position that the play is more optimistic than pessimistic and 10 passages that support the contrary position. The passages are all aligned with one or more claims on the Possible Claims and Counter-Claims resource. And they can be similarly used with great flexibility — from a more fully scaffolded approach that gives students the Selected Passages to analyze, discuss, and ultimately use in their arguments, to one that doles out a small percentage of them as models and instigators for more autonomous student work.
Finally, we have used informational texts alongside this argumentalized version of interpretive study of the play. I am generally somewhat skeptical of the pairing of informational texts and literary works. Oftentimes the connection between the two is topical, but not thematic or formal in any way. Simply because texts share the same or a similar topic does not mean that their ideas or formal properties are aligned in any way. It’s a little bit like pairing courses in a meal simply because they share a protein or other main ingredient: Chicken Kiev and tacos pollo share a protein but aren’t likely to match well on the plate.
But it can be done effectively, and in this instance I think that pairing A Raisin in the Sun with informational texts on housing discrimination prior to the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act couples very well with the environmental backdrop, and even some of the direct thematic concerns, of the play. An extremely thorough and compelling treatment of the historical phenomena of racist urban housing practices is contained in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s famed 2014 Atlantic Magazine essay on reparations. We have excerpted it to significant rounding and enriching effect in the unit on Lorraine Hansberry’s masterwork.
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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — A Raisin in The Sun — “A Raisin in the Sun”: Feminism in Lorraine Hansberry’s Book
"A Raisin in The Sun": Feminism in Lorraine Hansberry's Book
- Categories: A Raisin in The Sun Woman
About this sample
Words: 1113 |
Pages: 2.5 |
Published: Jun 29, 2018
Words: 1113 | Pages: 2.5 | 6 min read
Table of contents
Introduction, a raisin in the sun gender roles.
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Related Essays on A Raisin in The Sun
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Random House, 1959.
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Vintage Books, 1994.Chekhov, Anton. The Cherry Orchard. Dover Publications, 1991.Fugard, Athol. 'Master Harold'... and the boys. Samuel French, 1984.
Dreams have always been an integral part of human existence, serving as a source of motivation and hope for a better future. In Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun, the theme of dreams and the pursuit of them is [...]
The American Dream is a concept that has been deeply ingrained in the fabric of American society for centuries. It is the belief that anyone, regardless of their background or circumstances, can achieve success and prosperity [...]
The African-American experience of growing up in America changed dramatically throughout the course of the twentieth century, thus leading to differing views between the older and younger generations. In Lorraine Hansberry's [...]
Success/Values: Walter Lee defines success as material and financial gain. Beneatha defines success as self-actualization, or learning about and nurturing oneself. But to their mother, Lena,success is less self-centered and lies [...]
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Volume 2 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Environmentalism
the Black Theatre Review takes up the theme of environmentalism for Vol. 2.2. The contributors to this issue and some of the agents they cover through their work offer readers several considerations for why theatre as a medium is an important mode through which to explore this theme, namely its power to raise awareness about environmental issues, spark dialogue, and encourage audiences to act within their communities.
Front Matter
Editor-in-Chief: Introduction to the Black Theatre Review, Environmentalism
Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green
2024-03-26 Volume 2 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Environmentalism • i-ii
Prefiguring the Environmental Justice Movement: the Ecodramaturgy of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun
Theresa J. May
2024-03-26 Volume 2 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Environmentalism • 1-18
Bound to the Banana: Re-Evaluating the Discourse Surrounding Josephine Baker’s “Banana Dance”
Stephanie Engel
2024-03-26 Volume 2 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Environmentalism • 19-33
Performance for Environmental Sustainability in Uganda: A Collective Community Engagement Approach through Theatre for Development
Keneth Bamuturaki
2024-03-26 Volume 2 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Environmentalism • 34-43
Book Reviews
A Review of Towards an Ecocritical Theatre: Playing the Anthropocene
Iris Goode-Middleton
2024-03-26 Volume 2 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Environmentalism • 44-47
Notes from the Field
Dirty Work: An Ecocritical Reflection on Human Feces as a Tool of Protest and Performance
Gibson Alessandro Cima
2024-03-26 Volume 2 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Environmentalism • 48-51
Artistic Practice as Scholarship
Waters Wisdoms: Honoring and Reclaiming Indigenous and Ancestral Practices in the Face of Climate Disaster
Ann Mazzocca Bellecci
2024-03-26 Volume 2 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Environmentalism • 52-53
IMAGES
COMMENTS
Throughout the play, members of the Younger family act as if money is too precious to be parted with. In the opening scene, Travis asks his mother for fifty cents, and the seemingly paltry sum is too much for the impoverished Ruth Younger to give away. Although Beneatha doesn't love George Murchison, her family tells her to continue dating ...
A Raisin in the Sun Full Play Summary. A Raisin in the Sun portrays a few weeks in the life of the Youngers, a Black family living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. When the play opens, the Youngers are about to receive an insurance check for $10,000. This money comes from the deceased Mr. Younger's life insurance policy.
2. "The play 'A Raisin in the Sun' delves into the complexities of racial identity, illustrating the challenges faced by African Americans in pursuing the American Dream." 3. "Lena Younger's unwavering determination to buy a house serves as a symbol of resilience and empowerment in 'A Raisin in the Sun.' A Raisin in the Sun Essay Introduction ...
Introduction to A Raisin in The Sun. A Raisin in The Sun is a popular play by Lorraine Hansberry.It was performed for the first time in 1959. Hansberry has borrowed the title from a popular poem by Langston Hughes, "Harlem."The play revolves around an African American family living in Chicago who wants to bring improvement in its status through the insurance that their widowed mother, Lena ...
A Raisin in the Sun Summary. A Raisin in the Sun examines the effects of racial prejudice on the fulfillment of an African-American family's dreams. The play centers on the Youngers, a working-class family that lives in Chicago's South Side during the mid-twentieth century. Shortly before the play begins, the head of the Younger family, Big ...
Introduction. Lorraine Hansberry's story is heavily steeped in racism. It does well to portray the social features of strong segregation and racial discrimination that prevailed during the 1950s in the United States, a time when the story's younger family lived in Chicago's South Side ghetto, as well as the struggles of the African-Americans to resist against the unfair treatment being ...
Critical Overview. A Raisin in the Sun is easily Lorraine Hansberry's best-known work, although her early death is certainly a factor in her limited oeuvre. From its beginning, this play was ...
Walter Lee Younger, a chauffeur with a wife and son, wants to buy a liquor store. Beneatha, his younger sister, wants to go to medical school. Lena, their mother, wants to buy a decent house in an ...
Race and Gender in A Raisin in the Sun. In many ways, A Raisin in the Sun seems to forecast events that would transpire during the decade following its initial production and beyond. The play ...
A Raisin in the Spotlight A Raisin in the Sun inspired several adaptations, including a Tony Award-winning musical. Partly written by the Lorraine Hansberry's ex-husband Robert Nemiroff, after her death, Raisin added song and dance to the Youngers' story, winning the 1973 Tony Award for Best Musical. More loosely based on the original story, the play Clybourne Park tells the story of the ...
Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun is a sturdy classic of 20th century American literature and African-American literature and history, and it deserves to be as widely taught in high school English classes as it is. We have worked with multiple partner schools on the work, and our projects have been honed through iterative implementations to focus on several debatable issues ...
It shows the sacrifices people make to obtain freedom. Not everyone will achieve their hopes and dreams due to the difficulty's hardships life throws at them. The play A Raisin in the Sun, focus on the economic trouble of migrating families. And, the challenges of the stereotypes that took place in 1959. The play focuses on the African ...
A Raisin in the Sun. Lorraine Hansberry's play 'A Raisin in the Sun', first debuted in the year 1959 on Broadway, depicts the life of the Youngers, a fictional African-American family, in the 1950's, who live in Chicago, USA. Hansberry delineates the deceased father -... A Raisin in the Sun essays are academic essays for citation.
Long Essay on A Raisin in the Sun 500 Words in English. Long Essay on A Raisin in the Sun is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10. During the times of the Great Depression, many parts of America suffered from severe forms of racism. The southern parts of Chicago were no such exception.
A Raisin in the Sun was the first play by a Black American woman to be produced on Broadway. It enjoyed a successful run and won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. It has been staged many ...
While this essay on feminism in "A Raisin in The Sun" provides a solid analysis of the play's themes, there are several areas where the author could improve the quality of the writing. For instance, the author repeatedly uses the phrase "in conclusion" to introduce each of their main points, which can become repetitive and distract from the ...
Introduction Introductory statement/hook (CANNOT be a question): Achieving your dream is hard enough for your average person, but in "A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry, you can see how much harder it is to chase your dreams when you're a poor black family from the 50's. Full name of the play and the author's full name: "A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry Thesis ...
Race Barriers to Dreams. "A Raisin in the Sun" by Hansberry. Focusing on the life of a Black American family, the author discusses the problems of race-based prejudice, segregation, historical memory, and the role of generational gaps in racial minorities' attitudes to injustice. A Raisin in the Sun by Jane G. A.
Full Play Analysis. A Raisin in the Sun is centered around the persistent deferral of the Younger family's dreams. The Youngers are a working-class Black family with various dreams of upward mobility. Walter wants to take control of his life, restore his sense of masculinity, make his family proud, and eventually take on a new role as head of ...
the Black Theatre Review takes up the theme of environmentalism for Vol. 2.2. The contributors to this issue and some of the agents they cover through their work offer readers several considerations for why theatre as a medium is an important mode through which to explore this theme, namely its power to raise awareness about environmental issues, spark dialogue, and encourage audiences to act ...
A summary of Act 1: Scene 1 in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of A Raisin in the Sun and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.