Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun

by Charles J. Shields

Overview

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 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This dramatic telling of a passionate life—a very American life through self-reinvention—uses previously unpublished interviews with close friends in politics and theater, privately held correspondence, and deep research to reconcile old mysteries and raise new questions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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250205537
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/18/2022
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	1,056,116
Product dimensions:	9.40(w) x 6.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Charles J. Shields is the author of Harper Lee’s New York Times bestselling biography Mockingbird, the Kurt Vonnegut biography And So It Goes, and the biography of John Edward Williams, The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel. Shields has spoken to hundreds of large audiences in schools, libraries, museums, and historic theaters and appeared in newspapers and magazines worldwide, including the Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, Huffington Post, and New York Times.

Table of Contents

Chronology xi

Introduction xiii

Part I Chicago 1

Chapter 1 Infant of the Spring 3

Chapter 2 "The King of the Kitchenettes" 14

Chapter 3 Stay Where You Belong 27

Chapter 4 American Princess 46

Part II Madison, Wisconsin 59

Chapter 5 Entering into a Romance 61

Chapter 6 The Young Progressives 77

Chapter 7 Mexico 85

Part III Harlem 95

Chapter 8 "Flag from a Kitchenette Window" 97

Chapter 9 Freedom 111

Chapter 10 "A Young Harriet Tubman" 121

Chapter 11 The Passport 135

Chapter 12 "I Do Love You" 145

Part IV Greenwich Village 161

Chapter 13 Camp Unity 163

Chapter 14 "One Becomes a Woman" 174

Chapter 15 "I Ain't Sick" 192

Chapter 16 "Cindy, Oh Cindy" 206

Chapter 17 The Invisible Lesbian 216

Part V The Great White Way 227

Chapter 18 "Go the Way Your Blood Beats" 229

Chapter 19 "Something Urgently on Its Way" 243

Chapter 20 Dismantling the Master's House 264

Chapter 21 Chitterlin' Heights 283

Epilogue 303

Notes 306

Selected Bibliography 348

Acknowledgments 353

Illustration Credits 356

Index 357

Editorial Reviews

11/22/2021

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. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 01/01/2022

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

Library Journal

★ 2021-10-27
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 Seán 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.

Kirkus Reviews

Featured in The New York Times’s “16 New Books Coming in January”
Playbill’s “7 Theatre Books to Read This Winter”
Lit Hub’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2022”
Book Marks’s “The Best Reviewed Books of the Week,” 1/21/22
The Christian Science Monitor’s “10 best books of January”
Essence’s “New Year, New Reads” roundup

“[A] well-researched account of Hansberry’s life and conscientious summaries of her literary and political work…Shields paints an evocative portrait of Hansberry’s childhood in Chicago…[Lorraine Hansberry] fills a niche on the growing shelf of books devoted to her by offering a solid introduction to this important American artist and social critic.”
—The Washington Post

“Shields’s portrait is the latest attempt to expand our sense of the personal struggle behind the public figure, and to illuminate the many contradictions that [Lorraine Hansberry] sought to live and work through….Shields’s biography lays out a more complex narrative.”
—The New Yorker

“In his engrossing biography, Shields provides a contextualized portrait of Hansberry, the first Black woman to write a play staged on Broadway.…Shields has a knack for illuminating the lives of writers, and through his deep research, how Hansberry’s play about a Black Chicago family in the 1950s is so resonant today. He captures Hansberry in her full complexity.”
—The National Book Review

“[A] sparkling new biography by the acclaimed literary biographer Charles J. Shields. Shields has carefully sifted through not only Hansberry’s play scripts but a wide array of her personal correspondence, allowing him to focus attention on aspects of the playwright’s life analyzed less rigorously in previous scholarship…One of the most brilliant aspects of Shields’s study is its nuance, a tone that is possible primarily because of the author’s willingness to grapple with the inconsistencies and even contradictions he finds threaded through his subject’s life.”
—The Chicago Review of Books

“[A]n authoritative biography of one of the 20th century’s most significant playwrights and Black History icons…[Shields] examine[s] the parts of Lorraine Hansberry’s life that have escaped public knowledge…[A]nother landmark title to add to your collection.”
—BET

“[C]arefully researched and highly readable…this biography sheds new light on a remarkable writer and intellectual.”
—The Gay & Lesbian Review / Worldwide

“[Shields’s] examination of Raisin’s plot and influence is spot-on. He situates [Hansberry] among other midcentury American writers, artists, and activists, both white and Black, arguing she shouldn't be forgotten or critically disparaged.”
—The Bay Area Reporter

“An admiring portrait of the great American playwright Lorraine Hansberry lays bare both her greatness and her complications…Shields raises interesting questions about others’ contributions to Hansberry’s work…[Lorraine Hansberry] is thoughtful and deftly rendered, a welcome corrective for the carefully curated and sanitized version that has long constituted fans’ received wisdom.”
—BookPage

“[A] rich ode to a trailblazer who refused to conform to society’s expectations of Blackness, queer identity, and the role of a Black author.”
—Literary Hub

“Bestselling author Charles J. Shields takes a sage and scholarly look at the life of playwright, activist and feminist Lorraine Hansberry…Shields has composed a remarkable work, his dedication to its central character depicted in intimate, almost daily vignettes…Shields gives readers the total picture, revealing Hansberry to be a thoughtful, often humorous and thoroughly human figure who chose to use her considerable artistic gifts to educate and touch the hearts of a wide, appreciative audience.”
—Bookreporter

“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…A revealing and rewarding biography documenting the life, work, and historical relevance of a great American author.”
—Kirkus Reviews, *starred review*

“[N]oteworthy…This biography substantiates Hansberry’s accomplishments, despite her short life. Recommended for all Hansberry enthusiasts and 20th-century literary scholars.”
—Library Journal, *starred review*

“[W]ell-researched…Shields explores [Hansberry’s] bifurcated youth in Chicago as a child who grew up as the daughter in a wealthy family yet was subjected to racism…[and] shows how an adult Hansberry became deeply attracted to communism…a fine introduction to Hansberry’s world.”
—Publishers Weekly

“[A] rich chronicle…All who admire or are curious about Hansberry will cherish this bracing and fascinating analysis of a life cut short.”
—Booklist, *starred review*

“Lorraine Hansberry exhibits Shields’s pertinacious research.”
—Shelf Awareness

“[A] rich, edifying biography.”
—The Christian Science Monitor

“Amid a welcome resurgence of interest in Lorraine Hansberry, Charles J. Shields’s biography is distinguished by its narrative verve, its sweeping research, and its deep dive into the playwright’s several families, given and chosen. The joint history of A Raisin in the Sun and its ever-young author has never been richer.”
—William J. Maxwell, author of F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostwriters Framed African American Literature, and professor of English and African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis

From the Publisher