Assembled from plays, essays, letters, drawings, and photographs, this memoir records the passionate engagement and spectacular accomplishment of the playwright of A Raisin in the Sun.
It follows Lorraine Hansberry from her childhood in Chicago (where her family encountered vicious resistance when it moved into a white neighborhood), through her arrival in New York, where the triumph of A Raisin in the Sun made her famous virtually overnight, to her death at the tragically early age of thirty-four. Above all, Hansberry's autobiography rings with the voice of its creator: a black woman who could be angry, loving, bitter, touchingly funny, and defiantly proud.
"Suffused with the light that was Lorraine . . . one hears that inflection of voice, the exact timbre of the laugh." --James Baldwin
"An extraordinary achievement. . . . . Brilliantly alive." --The New York Times
"Inspired and inspiring. . . . A work of glowing beauty." --San Francisco Examiner
"I advise anyone who is interested in the human condition, black or white, to read it." --Newsday
Assembled from plays, essays, letters, drawings, and photographs, this memoir records the passionate engagement and spectacular accomplishment of the playwright of A Raisin in the Sun.
It follows Lorraine Hansberry from her childhood in Chicago (where her family encountered vicious resistance when it moved into a white neighborhood), through her arrival in New York, where the triumph of A Raisin in the Sun made her famous virtually overnight, to her death at the tragically early age of thirty-four. Above all, Hansberry's autobiography rings with the voice of its creator: a black woman who could be angry, loving, bitter, touchingly funny, and defiantly proud.
Praise
"Suffused with the light that was Lorraine . . . one hears that inflection of voice, the exact timbre of the laugh." --James Baldwin
"An extraordinary achievement. . . . . Brilliantly alive." --The New York Times
"Inspired and inspiring. . . . A work of glowing beauty." --San Francisco Examiner
"I advise anyone who is interested in the human condition, black or white, to read it." --Newsday
