The Younger family of Chicago's south side has lived in a two flat apartment for as long as they can remember. The year is sometime between World War II and 1959, when Hansberry first produced this play. And yet Raisin made to Broadway and television, cementing its place as a classic American play. What is remarkable about Hansberry's rise to stardom is that she was virtually unknown and African American at a time when African Americans were just starting to make gains in society. In 1959, 29 year old Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun, which went on to become "one of a handful of great American plays." Five years later she would succumb to cancer but not before Raisin penetrated the upper echelon of American plays.
She died of cancer at the age of 34 years. People identified Hansberry as a lesbian, and several of her works concern sexual freedom, an important topic. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry moved to city of New York and afterward worked at the pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals, such as Paul Robeson and W.E.B. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" Family of the author struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Her best known work highlights the lives of Blacks under racial segregation in Chicago. She, the first such Black woman, wrote a play, performed on Broadway. This writer inspired "To Be Young, Gifted and Black," song of Nina Simone. People know American playwright Lorraine Vivian Hansberry for her play A Raisin in the Sun (1959).
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