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Redlining In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

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Hansberry’s drama draws on her own experiences growing up in segregated Chicago, for example, redlining was often used in Chicago to discriminate against [colored people] who were moving into new neighborhoods. “Redlining is the practice of denying key services (like home loans and insurance) or increasing their costs for residents in a defined geographical area...It was almost exclusively a tool to force blacks (and other minorities) into particular geographic areas.”(Jamelle Bouie, How We Built the Ghettos, page 1). This ties to Hansberry’s play, a Raisin in the Sun, by the Younger family lived in a very cramped and poor area. They were then meet by Linder from the “welcoming committee” of the white neighborhood he told them the people of the neighborhood were …show more content…

Her characters like Walter and Ruth are forced to live in a cramped house because they don’t have the money to move out. Walter has to work as a chauffeur driving people around all day for a low wage. Just like in that time period when African Americans could not get high paying jobs, this aided in the racial problem because it kept blacks from being able to move into white neighborhoods. Another method used to keep blacks out of White neighborhoods was contract buying. “When selling on contract, the speculator offered the home to a black purchaser for a relatively low downpayment- often several hundred dollars would suffice. For bringing the home within the reach of a black purchaser, however, the speculator extracted a considerable price.” (Jamelle Bouie,How we built the ghettos, page 2) This is like when Lena the mother of Walter and beneatha bought a new house and only had to put a small down payment on it in order to buy the

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In the book, "A Raisin in the Sun"- which takes place in the 1950's, it talks about how A character in the book, Mama- buys a house for her family in A "white neighborhood". This is a problem because, in this time period, black neighborhoods & white neighborhoods were segregated. This text was also adapted into a movie. When directors adapt text texts to film, they might want to change the stage directions- which then, might change the meaning.

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I also find that the characters in A Raisin in the Sun are over exaggerating the situation they are in given the archetypal standards they represent. Each character is representation of something generational, a gender or race issue, and it's a testament to Hansberry's writing that the characters don't come across as mouthpieces for the story. They are living, breathing human beings. It's not impossible at all to imagine the Younger family crowded together in their tiny roach-infested apartment on the south side of Chicago struggling, striving, and dreaming. “Who the hell told you you had to be a doctor?

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Hansberry wrote a private play to bring the audience into a close relationship with the family, including flaws and all. It improves the audience’s impression of black people. Hansberry kept their drama to themselves to let the audience know that Blacks had an exclusive world that they only share. Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun to tell the story on how it was to be Black in the 50’s and how they dealt with the discrimination, segregation, and

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From Fantasy to Reality: A Circle of Disappointment Almost everyone has wanted to believe something so badly that they convince themselves it is true. The fantasy people create makes them happy for awhile but eventually it falls apart and gives way to reality, and this reality is often a great disappointment. The Younger family in Lorraine Hansberry’s award-winning play, A Raisin in the Sun, experience such a fall from fantasy to reality as does the narrator in James Joyce’s short story, “Araby.” Finally, a whole town has a similar experience in Edward Arlington Robinson’s poem “Richard Cory.”

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Historical Analysis: A Raisin in the Sun is a play about the author’s life. The segregation life and the event of moving into a white neighborhood are events from the life of Lorraine Hansberry, the author. The events that occurred in the play along with real life events relate to the Civil Rights Movement and feminist topics. Lorraine Hansberry moved into an all white neighborhood just like the Younger family moved into Clybourne Park. The author did not modify the major events of her own life but rather added a series of complications and details to fit the play such as the event of Walter losing the investment money.

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In the play Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry takes place on the southside of Chicago where Walter and his family are racially profiled and show us how the survive throughout their struggles. The central struggles for the younger family in their search for the American dream is mostly poverty and being racially profiled against for their actions. Hansberry challenges the traditional gender roles and issues of dominance throughout the play when Mama gives Walter lee the rest of the money at the end of the play. He becomes all excited and was supposed to save some for himself and put the rest of the money to Beneatha 's education. Instead, he gave all that money to Willy another character in the play which later on that he stole from him.

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In A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, thoughts of femininity and masculinity are woven throughout the play. The play is set in the 1950s, a time where racial tension still existed among black and white Americans even though segregation no longer existed. A Raisin in the Sun is about the Youngers, an African American family living in the slums of Chicago. The father has just passed away, and the family is about to receive an insurance check for $10,000. Each family member has his or her own idea as to how the money should be spent.

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Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun follows the struggles of an African American family living in a neighborhood in 1950s South Side Chicago. The play discusses several issues pertaining to African Americans of the time, such as poverty and discrimination. One of the major themes of the story is the search for a sense of belonging; whether that’s a sense of belonging to the continent of Africa, a neighborhood in Chicago, or on a personal level within the Younger family. The play explores this theme through its characters Beneatha, Mama and Walter.

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In June of that year Hansberry earned a title of the “most promising playwright” of the season. A Raisin in the Sun would later become the longest- running black play in Broadway’s history. The reason behind the plays success and popularity was because it explored a “universal theme—the search for freedom and a better life.” (AAYA) The play’s original run on Broadway lasted for nineteen months and a total of 530 performances.

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“A Raisin in the Sun,” written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959, was the first play ever produced on Broadway by an African-American woman and was considered ground-breaking for it’s time. Titled after Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” sometimes known as “A Dream Deferred,” the play and the subsequent film adaptations are honest examinations of race, family, poverty, discrimination, oppression and even abortion in urban Chicago after WWII. The original play was met with critical praise, including a review by Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times where he wrote, “For A Raisin in the Sun is a play about human beings who want, on the one hand, to preserve their family pride and, on the other hand, to break out of the poverty that seems to be their fate. Not having any axe to grind, Miss Hansberry has a wide range of topics to write about-some of them hilarious, some of them painful in the extreme.” The original screen adaptation released in 1961 was highly acclaimed in its own right, and was chosen in 2005 for preservation in the United States of America National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for its cultural and historical significance.

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Stone, Nic. Dear Martin. N.p.: Crown, 2017. Print.

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In the book “A Raisin in the Sun,” has many cultural segregation issues that are still in play today, such as racism. Moreover, when Lindner, a white man, states, “that for the happiness of all concerned that our Negro families are happier when they live in their own communities,”(Hansberry 1590) which evidently shows that he directly aimed racism towards the Younger family when they were trying to move into a bigger house in the white community. In today’s society bluntly uses vulgar language towards other races in a derogatory and dismissive way.

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When thinking of the ghetto, people generally conjure an image of a gritty, crime-infested, and hopeless place. Who decided this? Certainly not black people. Interestingly enough, just the presence of black families within a majority-white neighborhood in the 1900s caused those homes to drop in value, by thousands. If you were a white home owner who had spent five years’ wages on your first home, wouldn’t you want to protect your investment by all costs?

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The setting of the Raisin in the Sun is the ghetto of Chicago, where most black families lived and most of these black families had dreams of moving to a better neighbourhood, because of crime, but the housing industry causes segregated housing and manipulates communities with white fears of black integration. When Lorraine Hansberry was a child, her family also experienced the results of a government unconcerned with blacks leaving segregation. Lorraine used her play to tell people about her own struggle with racism, her play shows us that her problems were handled with determination. Linder speaks to the Younger family and offers them money to buy their house, because they, the white people feel that a community should share a common background and that negro families are happier when they live in their own communities. This is an example of how the Younger family has experienced racism, while it is true that people with the same background will be happier together, it is also their right to live where they feel they are progressing.

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The racial attitudes present in the play, A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry connect to how racial discrimination is prevalent in modern day. Discrimination is a battle that has been fought for many years and people in modern day still fight to rid of discrimination and bring justice. A civil rights group known as Black Lives Matter, has been a way for people to fight against discrimination and have their voices heard. This civil rights movement started “[i]n 2013, when George Zimmerman [ a white man] was acquitted of fatally shooting Trayvon Martin [ a black young man]. When this court case came out a lady named, Alicia Garza, saw it and posted a

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