Best Selling Books by Lorraine Hansberry

"Never before, the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. Indeed Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America--and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun." "The events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun," said The New York Times. "It is as if history is conspiring to make the play a classic." This Modern Library edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry's landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff.

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.

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.

With Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry gave this country its most moving authentic portrayal of black family life in the inner city. The Sing in Sidney Brustein's Window provides an unforgettable portrait of a man struggling with his individual fate in an age of racial and social injustice. Introduction by Robert Nemiroff.

"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.

Three plays describe a Black man torn between his African heritage and Western culture, the effects of slavery on both Blacks and whites, and the world after a nuclear war

For use in teaching literature to high school students.