Lorraine Hansberry’s play ‘A Raisin in the Sun’, first debuted in the year 1959 on Broadway, depicts the life of the Youngers, a fictional African-American family, in the 1950’s, who live in Chicago, USA. Hansberry delineates the deceased father -...

What exactly makes love and wealth so appealing to humans? Love is a desirable feeling, which people feel they cannot live without. People need love in their life to feel whole, when they are with or care for a special someone. Wealth refers to...

Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun challenges the stereotype of 1950's America as a country full of doting, content housewives. The women in this play, Mama, Ruth and Beneatha, represent three generations of black women who, despite their...

The African-American experience of growing up in America changed dramatically throughout the course of the twentieth century, thus leading to differing views between the older and younger generations. In Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the...

"We're people, we're just like the birds and the bees, We'd rather die on our feet, Than be livin' on our knees" ("James Brown Lyrics"). These lyrics for James Brown's classic soul hit "Say It Loud (I'm Black And I'm Proud)" could have easily been...

The “American Dream” connotes a vision of a house with a white picket fence, a place of warmth and family, a secure place to lay one's head at night, a place to just be. Much of African-American literature since the 1900's demonstrates that the...

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore -- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over -- Like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags Like a heavy load. Or does it...

Money is one way to achieve one of the “American Dreams.” The “American Dream” is different for everyone and that dream for most people depends on how they were raised. There are many plays that critique the “American Dream” but only two will be...

A melodrama is a film which appeals to the emotions of its audience, on a higher level than the simple “drama” genre. The characters of a melodrama are often stereotyped and exaggerated to indicate something about the culture of the times, making...

What describes family is not the people who are blood related or someone who has an obligation. Family is loving someone unconditionally and mutually; family is those who greet the worst self of someone without judgement and still stick around...

The American Dream varies for individuals, but for most it includes providing a stable home for their children and ensuring future generations will have more opportunities to become successful. In the play, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine...

Money and acquisitiveness have always had the ability to turn people into someone they are not. Greed can tear apart families and friendships when a person neglects others for their own benefit. This is depicted perfectly in Lorraine Hansberry’s...

“Money is life. Once upon a time freedom used to be life – now it’s money” (Hansberry, 74). The quote from Mama portrays the Youngers, a typical African American family living in Chicago in 1959, in their struggle to break free from the endless...

Both Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun and Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved are works that deal predominately with race, but feature vastly different subject matter. Beloved features a group of people haunted by the memory of...

In his book Twelve Million Black Voices Richard Wright asserts that:In the Black Belts of the northern cities, our women are the most circumscribed and tragic objects to be found in our lives […] Surrounding our black women are many almost...

“One of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific” (Hansberry, To Be Young 128).

Ben Keppel notes that during the 1960s and 1970s, A Raisin in the Sun ...