A Raisin in the Sun
Lorraine Hansberry (1959)
“A Black family in 1950s Chicago fights over a $10,000 insurance check — and every argument is really about whether Black Americans are allowed to dream.”
Why This Book Matters
The first play by a Black woman produced on Broadway. Won the 1959 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play, defeating Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill. Changed the representational landscape of American theater: for the first time, a Black American family was on a Broadway stage not as comedy, not as social problem, but as fully realized human beings with interior lives, philosophical arguments, and the full weight of the American Dream pressing on them. The title comes from Langston Hughes's poem 'Harlem (A Dream Deferred)' — Hansberry's choice of epigraph announced that this was a political act, not just a domestic drama.
Firsts & Innovations
First play by a Black woman produced on Broadway (1959)
First Black playwright to win the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play
First major American drama to make housing discrimination its central conflict rather than its background condition
Introduced the phrase 'A Raisin in the Sun' — from Langston Hughes's 'Harlem' — into permanent cultural vocabulary
Cultural Impact
Ran for 530 performances on Broadway — a record for a Black playwright at the time
Film adaptation in 1961 starring Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee; television adaptations in 1989 (Danny Glover) and 2008 (Sean Combs/Audra McDonald)
Now one of the ten most-produced plays in American theater history
Frequently taught alongside Death of a Salesman as competing visions of the American Dream
The Clybourne Park neighborhood of the play was the basis for Bruce Norris's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2010 play Clybourne Park — a companion piece set during and after the Youngers' arrival
Prompted public debate about what Black playwrights owed Black audiences — a debate Hansberry engaged with directly in her essay 'The Negro Writer and His Roots'
Banned & Challenged
Has been challenged in schools for language, particularly the use of period-appropriate racial slurs and the portrayal of abortion (Ruth's pregnancy and her decision). Also challenged in conservative districts for its implicit critique of housing segregation as a systemic issue rather than individual prejudice. Ironically, the play's optimistic ending has been used to dismiss these challenges: 'The family wins — what's the problem?' The problem, of course, is everything the play says before that ending.