Tayari's Blog: Happy Birthday, Sweet Lorraine

Posted by TayariJones on May 19, 2007 08:06 AM
Filed under Travels & Rambles

Today is the birthday of Lorraine Hansberry, author of many plays, but most famously, A Raisin In The Sun. In his beautiful elegy for her, "Sweet Lorraine," that was reprinted as the Preface of To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, James Baldwin wrote of his experience going to see A Raisin in the Sun:

I had never in my life seen so many black people in the theatre... Never before, in the entire history of the American theatre, had so much of the truth of black people's lives been seen on the stage. Black people ignored the theater because the theater had always ignored them.

Lorraine Hansberry died in 1965, at the age of 34.

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There are 1 comments on "Happy Birthday, Sweet Lorraine". If you'd like to leave a comment, click here to jump down to the comments entry form.

Comment #1, by nicolebrackett [TypeKey Profile Page]

I love Lorraine Hansberry's writing. I first read A Raisin in the Sun in high school, and we own the DVD of the great black-and-white film adaptation. I believe she died of cancer, didn't she? A tragic loss, regardless. One can't help but wonder about the amazing plays, etc. she would have no doubt continued to write, had she lived.

May 23, 2007 03:08 PM

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