ENG2603 - Colonial And Postcolonial African Literatures (ENG2603)
Summary
Colonial And Postcolonial African Literatures (ENG2603) :A RAISIN IN THE SUN Complete Summary and Analysis
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ENG2603 - Colonial And Postcolonial African Literatures (ENG2603)
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University Of South Africa (Unisa)
A complete summary of ''A RAISIN IN THE SUN BY LORRAINE HANSBERRY', which falls under the Colonial And Postcolonial African Literatures (ENG2603) modules.
colonial and postcolonial african literatures eng2603
eng2603 a raisin in the sun
a raisin in the sun summary
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University of South Africa (Unisa)
ENG2603 - Colonial And Postcolonial African Literatures (ENG2603)
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Context
Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago on May 19, 1930, the youngest of four children. Her parents were
well-educated, successful black citizens who publicly fought discrimination against black people. When
Hansberry was a child, she and her family lived in a black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. During
this era, segregation—the enforced separation of whites and blacks—was still legal and widespread
throughout the South. Northern states, including Hansberry’s own Illinois, had no official policy of
segregation, but they were generally self-segregated along racial and economic lines. Chicago was a
striking example of a city carved into strictly divided black and white neighborhoods. Hansberry’s family
became one of the first to move into a white neighborhood, but Hansberry still attended a segregated
public school for blacks. When neighbors struck at them with threats of violence and legal action, the
Hansberrys defended themselves. Hansberry’s father successfully brought his case all the way to the
Supreme Court.
Hansberry wrote that she always felt the inclination to record her experiences. At times, her writing—
including A Raisin in the Sun—is recognizably autobiographical. She was one of the first playwrights to
create realistic portraits of African-American life. When A Raisin in the Sun opened in March 1959, it met
with great praise from white and black audience members alike. Arguably the first play to portray black
characters, themes, and conflicts in a natural and realistic manner, A Raisin in the Sun received the New
York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play of the Year. Hansberry was the youngest playwright, the fifth
woman, and the only black writer at that point to win the award. She used her new fame to help bring
attention to the American civil rights movement as well as African struggles for independence from
colonialism. Her promising career was cut short when she died from cancer in 1965, at the age of thirty-
four.
A Raisin in the Sun can be considered a turning point in American art because it addresses so many issues
important during the 1950s in the United States. The 1950s are widely mocked in modern times as an age
of complacency and conformism, symbolized by the growth of suburbs and commercial culture that began
in that decade. Such a view, however, is superficial at best. Beneath the economic prosperity that
characterized America in the years following World War II roiled growing domestic and racial tension. The
stereotype of 1950s America as a land of happy housewives and blacks content with their inferior status
resulted in an upswell of social resentment that would finally find public voice in the civil rights and
feminist movements of the 1960s. A Raisin in the Sun, first performed as the conservative 1950s slid into
the radical sixties, explores both of these vital issues.
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,A Raisin in the Sun was a revolutionary work for its time. Hansberry creates in the Younger family one of
the first honest depictions of a black family on an American stage, in an age when predominantly black
audiences simply did not exist. Before this play, African-American roles, usually small and comedic, largely
employed ethnic stereotypes. Hansberry, however, shows an entire black family in a realistic light, one that
is unflattering and far from comedic. She uses black vernacular throughout the play and broaches
important issues and conflicts, such as poverty, discrimination, and the construction of African-American
racial identity.
A Raisin in the Sun explores not only the tension between white and black society but also the strain within
the black community over how to react to an oppressive white community. Hansberry’s drama asks
difficult questions about assimilation and identity. Through the character of Joseph Asagai, Hansberry
reveals a trend toward celebrating African heritage. As he calls for a native revolt in his homeland, she
seems to predict the anticolonial struggles in African countries of the upcoming decades, as well as the
inevitability and necessity of integration.
Hansberry also addressed feminist questions ahead of their time in A Raisin in the Sun. Through the
character of Beneatha, Hansberry proposes that marriage is not necessary for women and that women can
and should have ambitious career goals. She even approaches an abortion debate, allowing the topic of
abortion to enter the action in an era when abortion was illegal. Of course, one of her most radical
statements was simply the writing and production of the play—no small feat given her status as a young,
black woman in the 1950s.
All of this idealism about race and gender relations boils down to a larger, timeless point—that dreams are
crucial. In fact, Hansberry’s play focuses primarily on the dreams driving and motivating its main
characters. These dreams function in positive ways, by lifting their minds from their hard work and tough
lifestyle, and in negative ways, by creating in them even more dissatisfaction with their present situations.
For the most part, however, the negative dreams come from placing emphasis on materialistic goals rather
than on familial pride and happiness. Hansberry seems to argue that as long as people attempt to do their
best for their families, they can lift each other up. A Raisin in the Sun remains important as a cultural
document of a crucial period in American history as well as for the continued debate over racial and
gender issues that it has helped spark.
A Note on the Title
Lorraine Hansberry took the title of A Raisin in the Sun from a line in Langston Hughes’s famous 1951 poem
“Harlem: A Dream Deferred.” Hughes was a prominent black poet during the 1920s Harlem Renaissance in
New York City, during which black artists of all kinds—musicians, poets, writers—gave innovative voices to
their personal and cultural experiences. The Harlem Renaissance was a time of immense promise and
hopefulness for black artists, as their efforts were noticed and applauded across the United States. In fact,
the 1920s are known to history as the Jazz Age, since that musical form, created by a vanguard of black
Page 2 of 27
, musicians, gained immense national popularity during the period and seemed to embody the exuberance
and excitement of the decade. The Harlem Renaissance and the positive national response to the art it
produced seemed to herald the possibility of a new age of acceptance for blacks in America.
Langston Hughes was one of the brightest lights of the Harlem Renaissance, and his poems and essays
celebrate black culture, creativity, and strength. However, Hughes wrote “Harlem” in 1951, twenty years
after the Great Depression crushed the Harlem Renaissance and devastated black communities more
terribly than any other group in the United States. In addition, the post–World War II years of the 1950s
were characterized by “white flight,” in which whites fled the cities in favor of the rapidly growing suburbs.
Blacks were often left behind in deteriorating cities, and were unwelcome in the suburbs. In a time of
renewed prosperity, blacks were for the most part left behind.
“Harlem” captures the tension between the need for black expression and the impossibility of that
expression because of American society’s oppression of its black population. In the poem, Hughes asks
whether a “dream deferred”—a dream put on hold—withers up “[l]ike a raisin in the sun.” His lines
confront the racist and dehumanizing attitude prevalent in American society before the civil rights
movement of the 1960s that black desires and ambitions were, at best, unimportant and should be
ignored, and at worst, should be forcibly resisted. His closing rhetorical question—“Or does [a dream
deferred] explode?”—is incendiary, a bold statement that the suppression of black dreams might result in
an eruption. It implicitly places the blame for this possible eruption on the oppressive society that forces
the dream to be deferred. Hansberry’s reference to Hughes’s poem in her play’s title highlights the
importance of dreams in A Raisin in the Sun and the struggle that her characters face to realize their
individual dreams, a struggle inextricably tied to the more fundamental black dream of equality in America.
Plot Overview
A Raisin in the Sun portrays a few weeks in the life of the Youngers, an African-American 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.
Each of the adult members of the family has an idea as to what he or she would like to do with this money.
The matriarch of the family, Mama, wants to buy a house to fulfill a dream she shared with her husband.
Mama’s son, Walter Lee, would rather use the money to invest in a liquor store with his friends. He
believes that the investment will solve the family’s financial problems forever. Walter’s wife, Ruth, agrees
with Mama, however, and hopes that she and Walter can provide more space and opportunity for their
son, Travis. Finally, Beneatha, Walter’s sister and Mama’s daughter, wants to use the money for her
medical school tuition. She also wishes that her family members were not so interested in joining the white
world. Beneatha instead tries to find her identity by looking back to the past and to Africa.
As the play progresses, the Youngers clash over their competing dreams. Ruth discovers that she is
pregnant but fears that if she has the child, she will put more financial pressure on her family members.
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