Bibliography

Borrios, Olga. “The Intellectual Spear: Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs.” Atlantis, Vol. 18 No. 1/2 (June-December 1996): pp. 28-36. Web. 23 March 2015.

Cheney, Anne. Lorraine Hansberry. Boston. Twayne Publishers. ©1984. Print.

Gainor, J. Ellen; Garner Jr, Stanton B; and Puchner, Martin. Norton Anthology of Drama, the; Volume 2; Second Edition. New York. W.W. Norton and Company. ©2014. Print.

Hansberry, Lorraine, ad Nemiroff, Robert. To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. New York. Vintage Books. ©1969. Print.

 -The Last Collected Plays. New York. New American Library. ©1983. Print.

-A Raisin in the Sun: Expanded Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition and The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. New York. New American Library. ©1987. Print.

Leeson, Richard M. Lorraine Hansbery: A Research and Production Sourcebook. Westport, Connecticut. Greenwood Press. ©1997. Print.

Lieberman, Robbie. “Measure Them Right”: Lorraine Hansberry and the Struggle for Peace. Science & Society, Vol. 75 No. 2 (April 2011): pp. 206–235. Web. 1 May 2015.

No Author. “Les Blancs.” Internet Broadway Database. Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=3564s

Riley, Clayton. (1970, November 29. “An Incredibly Moving Experience: A Black Critic on ‘Les Blancs’”. Retrieved from http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9D02E5D91038E43BBC4151DFB767838B669EDE

The Civil Rights Movement

            The Civil Rights Movement was very important to Lorraine Hansberry, because it validated, supported, and reinforced everything she says throughout her plays. She was a very outspoken member of society, calling for equality for everyone, not just for blacks. However, she was definitely in favor of armed resistance against violent racists. As Olga Barrios cites,

"I think . . . that [Blacks] must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non-violent. That they must harass, debate, petition, ... boycott, sing hymns, ... and shoot from their windows when the racist come cruising their communities" (29).

She thought that Martin Luther King, Jr. was not as effective as a protest leader as he could have been if he were in favor of violent resistance. She strongly supported Malcolm X when he came around, and can be considered a Black Panther forerunner (29).

Critical Analysis: Les Blancs

Although A Raisin in the Sun is Hanberry’s most well-known play, Les Blancs is the “black sheep” of the family, translating from French to “The Whites.” The play is a response to French playwright Jean Genet’s 1959 play The Blacks, in which black actors wear white masks to represent white slave owners (Barrios 32, Norton Anthology 824). According to Olga Barrios, Hansberry does not rise to the bait that Genet set, but instead rises above it by making her characters full people as opposed to stereotypes, or making all characters of the same race the same style of character.
The play began previews on Broadway on October 11, 1970; with an official opening on November 15. The show ran for 30 previews and 40 performances to close on December 19, 1970. The cast starred James Earl Jones, who won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance in the role; and Lili Darvas, who was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play, both in 1971. The costume designer, Jane Greenwood, was also nominated for a Tony Award (Internet Broadway Database).
One very interesting thing about the play is that it is the only one of Hansberry’s plays to take place in Africa. While she was interested in African studies her entire life, she never managed to set one of her plays there until her final story, which was finished by her ex-husband and publisher Robert Nimeroff. I believe this is because she was too focused on the events happening in the United States at the time, mainly the Civil Rights Movement.

Major Works

Amazingly, Lorraine Hansberry only wrote five plays. They are, in order of publication, A Raisin in the Sun (1959), The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window (1964), Le Blancs (1970), The Drinking Gourd, and What Use Are Flowers? (both published in 1972 by her ex-husband/publisher after her death). She also wrote an autobiography titled To Be Young, Gifted, and Black (1969) and left a play called Toussaint, focused around the Haitian liberator who was a great influence to her throughout her life, unfinished. To Be Young, Gifted, and Black was also adapted into a play. Her plays deal with themes of prejudice, mainly focusing on race, class, and/or gender, while also discussing family dynamics and the human condition.

Early Life

Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930, to lawyer Carl A. Hansberry and Nannie Perry Hansberry in Chicago, Illinois. Her parents were dedicated to the battle against racism, so when they saw that the doctors had written "negro" on her birth certificate, they scratched it out and wrote "black." (To Be Young, Gifted, and Black ad. Nemiroff, 16) Despite growing up during the Great Depression, the Hansberry family was wealthy due to her father's steady job and the history of education in the family- Carl's parents were teachers and Nannie's father was a preacher. However, their life of relative comfort caused problems for Lorraine when she was little. On her first day of Kindergarten, she was sent to school in a fur coat when many children were going hungry. As a result, she was beat up by her classmates, many of which ended up becoming her closest friends in high school. After that incident, she became violently opposed to symbols of wealth to the point of trying to emulate the lifestyle of her poor friends. “They, understandably, never understood (or believed) my envy- and they never will” (Nemiroff, 39)