New Releases by Lorraine Hansberry

The story of black playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Woven together from letters, diaries, notebooks and extracts from her plays by Robert Nemiroff, her husband and literary executor. Arranged chronologically but without sharp divisions between scenes. No single member of the cast plays Lorraine Hansberry - all in turn (both male and female) play her, as well as characters from her plays and the people who most affected her. Specifies three black actresses (one older), one black actor, two white actresses and one white actor. More people can be used with less doubling.

For use in teaching literature to high school students.

In south side Chicago, Walter Lee, a black chauffeur, dreams of a better life, and hopes to use his father''s life insurance money to open a liquor store. His mother, who rejects the liquor business, uses some of the money to secure a proper house for the family. Mr Lindner, a representative of the all-white neighbourhood, tries to buy them out. Walter sinks the rest of the money into his business scheme, only to have it stolen by one of his partners. In despair Walter contacts Lindner, and almost begs to buy them out, but with the help of his wife, Walter finally finds a way to assert his dignity.Deeply committed to the black struggle for equality and human rights, Lorraine Hansberry''s brilliant career as a writer was cut short by her death when she was only 35. A Raisin in the Sun was the first play written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Hansberry was the youngest and the first black writer to receive this award.

This is the probing, hilarious and provocative story of Sidney, a disenchanted Greenwich Village intellectual, his wife Iris, an aspiring actress, and their colorful circle of friends and relations. Set against the shenanigans of a stormy political campaign, the play follows its characters in their unorthodox quests for meaningful lives in an age of corruption, alienation and cynicism. With compassion, humor and poignancy, the author examines questions concerning the fragility of love, morality and ethics, interracial relationships, drugs, rebellion, conformity and especially withdrawal from or commitment to the world.

Three plays about the struggles of black people convey the author''s feelings of anger and frustration.

"Best American play of 1970, Les Blancs confronts the hope and tragedy of Africa in revolution. The setting is a white Christian mission in a colony about to explode. The time is that hour of reckoning when no one the guilty nor the innocent can evade the consequences of white colonialism and imperatives of black liberation. Tshembe Matoseh, the English educated son of a chief, has come home to bury his father. He finds his teenage brother a near alcoholic and his older brother a priest and traitor to his people. Forswearing politics and wanting only to return to his wife and child in England, Tshembe is drawn into the conflict symbolized by a woman dancer, the powerful Spirit of Africa who pursues him."--Page 4 of cover.

Hundreds of black & white photographs chronicling the civil rights movement. Captions and accompanying text by Lorraine Hansberry, American playwright. Photographers include Danny Lyon, Don Charles, Norris McNamara, Frank Dandridge and others.

Letter in reply to Ruth Gibson''s question whether she knows of other successful women playwrights.