May 19, 1930
Lorraine Hansberry,
African-American
playwright and author.
Hansberry was born May 19, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois. She moved to New York City in 1950 to pursue a career as a writer. In 1959, her play, “A Raisin in the Sun” debuted on Broadway. It was the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.
The play received the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Play of the Year, making Hansberry the youngest playwright and the fifth woman to receive that award. Her only other play to be produced on Broadway was “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” (1965).
After her death, her ex-husband completed several of her unfinished manuscripts, including “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” (1969) and “Les Blancs” (1994). The Lorraine Hansberry Theater in San Francisco, California in named in her honor. Her biography, “They Found a Way: Lorraine Hansberry,” was published in 1978.
__________________________
Remembering
Lorraine Hansberry
(5/19/1930 - 1/12/1965)
think"
>via: http://plantaseednow.blogspot.com/2011/05/remembering-lorraine-hansberry-5191...
__________________________
The Thing That
Makes You Exceptional:
Lorraine Hansberry
in the Village
by John Flood, Hudson Park Branch Library
Lorraine Hansberry lived at 337 Bleecker Street. Her birthday is May 19.
A Raisin in the Sun was the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. Here are some quotes:
A Raisin in the Sun (1959)
I look at you and I see the final triumph of stupidity in the world!
Beneatha to Walter, Act III
There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him; what he's been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning — because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.
Mama, Act III
Eventually it comes to you: the thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.
To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words (1969)
>via: http://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/05/19/thing-makes-you-exceptional-lorraine-hans....T7fwgrNogxg.facebook