博客

AsBlack History Monthcloses and segues intoWomen’s HistoryMonth, it seems fitting that Lorraine Hansberry, an African American playwright, should bridge that transition. Hansberry’s work not only embodied and reflected the struggle of African Americans in the age of segregation during the 1950s and 1960s, it also voiced her concern for妇女权利. In aninterviewwith Studs Terkel in 1959 Hansberry told him “the most oppressed group of any oppressed group will be its women, and that those who are “twice oppressed” may become “twice militant.”

Hansberry grew up in a civil rights family in South Side Chicago. Her father, Carl Augustus Hansberry, was a successful real estate broker and civil rights activist. In 1938, when Lorraine was around eight, her father bought a house on the edge of the white, upper middle class neighborhood of Washington Park in South Side Chicago. They immediately felt the violent brutality of racism and racial segregation from white residents of that neighborhood. The violence became so unbearable at one point, Lorraine’s mother patrolled the house with a loaded German Ruger pistol. Residents then tried to force out the Hansberrys legally, andthe caseeventually wound up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Miss Hansberry’s most famous play, “A Raisin in the Sun,” which took its title from the Langston Hughes poem “Harlem，“在那个时候反映了她的经历。首先在康涅狄格州纽黑文举例说明，它成为非洲裔美国女性在百老汇开放的第一个游戏。为此，她也成为第一个赢得纽约戏剧批评的圆奖的非洲裔美国和第五个女性。好莱坞电影的戏剧很快跟踪并主演了同样的行为集合，在百老汇开放了播放，作为Sidney Poitier，Ruby Dee，Claudia McNeil和Louis Gossett，Jr的这种值得注意的演员。

For the literary and theatre world, Lorraine Hansberry’s life and work was cut way too short. In 1965, at the age of 34, she succumbed to pancreatic cancer, but not before ‘A Raisin in the Sun‘ had made a huge cultural and social impact. The play has since been reproduced in many countries including Sweden and Russia, and at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, England, as well as countless revivals on the American stage, most notably the recent 2008 movie revival starring Sean Combs, Audra McDonald, and Phylicia Rashad.

学生可以进一步探索eLibrary’snew vibrant website and platform to find out more about Lorraine Hansberry, her work, and her fight for civil rights for African Americans and women.

Here are some other resources on Lorraine Hansberry to help get you started:

Lorraine Hansberry的反光'窗口'
Washington Post(Newspaper)

Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs and the American Civil Rights Movement
African American Review(Scholarly Journal)

新的PBS电影告诉Hansberry的故事
Chicago Tribune(Newspaper)

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