A raisin in the sun
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born May 19, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois the youngest by seven years, of four children. Her father, Carl A. Hansberry, is a successful real estate broker, and a civil right activist. Her mother, Nannie Perry, is a schoolteacher who entered politics and became a ward committee woman. When Lorraine was eight, her parents moved to a white neighborhood where the experiences of discrimination led to a civil rights suit that they won. The granddaughter of a freed slave and deeply committed to the Black struggle for equality and human rights, Lorraine Hansberry became a spokesperson for black Americans. Her writings reflect her fight for black civil rights, which is reflected by her views against racism and sexual and statutory discrimination. A Raisin in the Sun was first produced in 1959. The play personified many of the issues which were to divide American culture during the decade of the 1960s. Lorraine Hansberry, the playwright, was an unknown dramatist until she achieved unprecedented success when her play became a Broadway sensation. Not only were successful women playwrights rare at the time, but successful young black women playwrights were virtually unheard of. Within its context, the success of A Raisin in the Sun is particularly stunning. She used plot characters and setting to embody the struggles Blacks had to overcome while facing discrimination and an underlying desire to succeed beyond conception. The play occurs during the late 1950s, a time when many Americans were prosperous and when some racial questions were beginning to be raised, but before the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs is an excellent theory to analyze A Raisin in the Sun since needs and wants are the basics to human survival. Its core is that of humankind equality which crosses geographic, racial, gender, social, ethnic and religious backgrounds. The situational setting of A Raisin in the Sun makes Maslow’s theory of Hierarchy of