A Raisin in the Sun

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Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was an American playwright and writer. She was the first Black American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans in Chicago living under racial segregation.

"Never before, in the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of Black people''s lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. This edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry''s landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff. Lorraine Hansberry''s award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of Black America—and changed American theater forever. The play''s title comes from a line in Langston Hughes''s poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun." "The events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun," said The New York Times. "It is as if history is conspiring to make the play a classic."

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