Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind a Raisin in the Sun

November 22, 2021
Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965) had “a gift, or maybe an instinct, for engaging with the leading black American playwrights, novelists, activists, and cultural leaders of her day,” writes bestseller Shields (Mockingbird) in this well-researched if knotty biography of the playwright. Stating his desire to both understand Hansberry’s life in the context of her contemporaries and to show what set her apart, Shields explores her bifurcated youth in Chicago as a child who grew up as the daughter in a wealthy family yet was subjected to racism. Hansberry’s father was a slumlord, and Shields shows how an adult Hansberry became deeply attracted to communism and, “despite being an anticapitalist, she enjoyed the cultural and material advantages of an upbringing among the black elite.” Shields focuses, too, on the writing and production of Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, which he estimates is up there with The Death of a Salesman as “the most popular work of mid-twentieth-century American theater” and was the high point of Hansberry’s tragically short career. Shields, however, can come across as dismissive of his subject, as when he repeatedly trots out (and dwells on) the question of whether Hansberry actually wrote Raisin, but doesn’t hazard an answer since “the original manuscript was lost.” It’s a fine introduction to Hansberry’s world, but readers may be left wanting.

Starred review from January 1, 2022

If the Black American playwright Lorraine Hansberry (1930-65) had not died young, one wonders what other contributions she could have made to 20th-century American literature. Shields (author of biographies of Harper Lee and Kurt Vonnegut) writes an excellent account of Hansberry's life, drawing from his own interviews with Hansberry's friends and family and from correspondence and diaries found in the Hansberry Papers repository at the Schomburg Center of the New York Public Library, among other sources. Born into an entrepreneurial family who found success building kitchenettes in Chicago, Hansberry embraced leftist causes in college and wrote for Marxist newspapers. She was not out as a lesbian and struggled with depression, Shields writes. He also discusses Hansberry's influences and interactions with other writers and activists (James Baldwin, Alice Childress, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson). Shields provides interesting background describing the Chicago and New York Hansberry would have known. His account of the development and marketing of A Raisin in the Sun is particularly noteworthy. Shields also reveals the name of a patron who helped fund the play's production; until this biography, he had remained anonymous. VERDICT This biography substantiates Hansberry's accomplishments, despite her short life. Recommended for all Hansberry enthusiasts and 20th-century literary scholars.--Erica Swenson Danowitz

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Starred review from November 15, 2021
Acclaimed biographer Shields explores the life and work of one of the most celebrated American playwrights of the 20th century. Drawing on meticulously researched sources, including previously unpublished interviews and private correspondence, Shields offers an illuminating portrait of Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) and her tragically brief but formidable career. Shields, author of biographies of Kurt Vonnegut and Harper Lee, deftly sets the particularities of Hansberry's life against a backdrop of relevant themes. These include the Great Migration of African Americans out of the rural South, housing crises in urban centers such as Chicago, intensifying civil rights battles on a variety of fronts, acute concerns over nuclear proliferation, and the appeal of the Communist Party for America's disenfranchised. The author's analyses of his subject's intellectual and literary growth are especially admirable. Raised in a family whose wealth depended on an often predatory mode of capitalism, Hansberry embraced Marxism as a young adult, and the tension created by her commitment to socialism forms one of the most striking subplots of this narrative. Moreover, Shields skillfully locates Hansberry's evolving ideology within contemporary literary and political movements. For example, the author gives us a clear sense of the influence of Irish playwright Se�n O'Casey, of fellow American authors and public intellectuals such as James Baldwin, and of a range of figures interested in critiquing conventional gender roles. As Shields notes of his subject's immersion in avant-garde critical perspectives, "when there was, as yet, no national feminist discourse coming from any quarter, Hansberry was schooled in woman-centered intersectional thinking by some of the most progressive black women of her day." The book's subtitle ultimately delivers on its promise, as the author provides a fascinating view of the personal and cultural forces informing Hansberry's dramatic masterpiece, A Raisin in the Sun. A revealing and rewarding biography documenting the life, work, and historical relevance of a great American author.

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Starred review from December 15, 2021
Hansberry accomplished so much during her short time on this earth, including, most famously, A Raisin in the Sun, one of the most significant works of the twentieth century and written when she was just 28 years old. Hansberry lived an emotionally complicated life as a bisexual African American woman working in a mostly white profession and married to Robert Nemiroff, a white Jewish man. Bookish by nature, she also possessed strongly held convictions. Biographer Shields follows the young playwright on her many journeys, from Chicago to Madison to Harlem to Greenwich Village and the Broadway stage. He convincingly argues that if Hansberry had not died at 34 in 1965 of pancreatic cancer, she would have been an "elder spokesperson" in the LGBTQ and Black Lives Matter movements. He situates Hansberry among her contemporaries and traces her development as an artist and as a person, drawing on her private correspondence, her personal notes, and drafts of unpublished works. He also offers a rich chronicle of life on the South Side of Chicago, including background to the 1940 legal case, Hansberry v. Lee, that inspired her famous play, and describes her relationships with fellow artists. All who admire or are curious about Hansberry will cherish this bracing and fascinating analysis of a life cut short. --

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