Political Radicalism and Artistic Innovation in the Works of Lorraine Hansberry

Abstract

Abstract Lorraine Hansberry (figure 2.1) was a visionary playwright whose belief in humankind’s potential to overcome its own excesses of avarice, oppression, and inhumanity compelled her to raise provocative questionson the American stage. Ironically, her success with A Raisin in the Sun, which won the 1959 New York Drama Critics Circle Award and which won acclaim from white as well as black audiences during its Broadway production, led some critics to view her work as integrationist and accommodationist. A virile, confrontational Black Arts Movement in the 1960s, which challenged its parent, the Civil Rights Movement, following Hansberry’s death, seemed to eclipse her work and to label it as “old-fashioned,” both in form and content. How ever, persistent voices continued to claim for Hansberry a more radical stance, and during the 1990s, they have been joined by some of her earlier detractors. A close examination of two of her plays, A Raisin in the Sun and Les Blancs, combined with information about her sources and facts about her life affirm a political stance more radical than previously recognized and artistic choices that challenge the boundaries of theatrical realism.

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