The moving story of the life of the woman behind A Raisin in the Sun, the most widely anthologized, read, and performed play of the American stage, by the New York Times bestselling author of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee Written when she was just twenty-eight, Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark A Raisin in the Sun is listed by the National Theatre as one of the hundred most significant works … Theatre as one of the hundred most significant works of the twentieth century. Hansberry was the first Black woman to have a play performed on Broadway, and the first Black and youngest American playwright to win a New York Critics’ Circle Award.
Charles J. Shields’s authoritative biography of one of the twentieth century’s most admired playwrights examines the parts of Lorraine Hansberry’s life that have escaped public knowledge: the influence of her upper-class background, her fight for peace and nuclear disarmament, the reason why she embraced Communism during the Cold War, and her dependence on her white husband–her best friend, critic, and promoter. Many of the identity issues about class, sexuality, and race that she struggled with are relevant and urgent today.
This dramatic telling of a passionate life–a very American life through self-reinvention–uses previously unpublished interviews with close friends in politics and theater, privately held correspondence, and deep research to reconcile old mysteries and raise new questions about a life not fully described until now.
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Read 12.31.2021
I have read Mr. Shields before and know him to be an exemplary biographer. He isn’t afraid to speak the truth and not hide behind what he calls “continuity” for the sake of the narrative and it is that way of thinking that helps him with this biography of Lorraine Hansberry. I am sure there will be quite a few people who read this that will be surprised at what they find between the covers of this book. I was surprised at what I read, but most of that was because outside of knowing that she wrote “A Raisin in the Sun”, I knew nothing else about Lorraine Hansberry and to be honest, what I read did not endear me to her. I found I didn’t really like the woman who wrote one of the most titular plays in the American lexicon [one that moved me beyond measure when I first read it in High School – I had no idea that a play could evoke such emotions in a person and it has never left me]. She was a mass of contradictions [loved the middle class life, but also loved the idea of Marxism and communism, though she left those readily enough when they fell out of fashion; she loved her husband, but also loved women and had several relationships with them] and at time seems like not a very nice person [though once you read about her family and her slum-lord father, you will not be surprised that she is the way she was], though I doubt that knowing people didn’t like her would have bothered her much – she didn’t do what she did for popularity or admiration. The one person she truly wanted love and affection and adoration from was her husband Bob Nemiroff and he was never fully able to give that to her [what she got from him was a really crazy co-dependent relationship and was at time, completely controlled by him] and in the end, I liked him even less than she. What he does at the end of her life is nothing short of criminal in my way of thinking and how he handles things after her death is close to disgusting. It is no wonder most of her friends didn’t like him.
Very well written and meticulously researched, this was a good book over-all [though it took me twelve days to read it – the chapters are massively long and I often got bored mid-chapter with a lot of the “fluff” that I just didn’t find important – not that it wasn’t, I just didn’t see the point of it] and I cannot say her life wasn’t interesting, from the beginning and right up to the end[even the parts I didn’t agree with and the parts that completely baffled me] and it is a story that will absolutely stay with me, much like the play has for all these years.
Thank you to NetGalley, Charles J. Shields, and Henry Holt and Company for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.