At the same time, they were civil rights activists who were egalitarian enough to send little Lorraine to public school. Hansberry’s parents were wealthy Republicans her father made his money, according to Shields, as a slumlord. As we enter the final month of a Broadway season that has showcased an unprecedented number of African American playwrights and librettists (including Hansberry’s one-time friend and collaborator, the late Alice Childress), it seems a good time to appreciate Hansberry’s value specifically as a playwright.Īdmittedly, Shields’ look at the broad spectrum of her colorful life is well-researched, full of incident, and blunter than usual in highlighting its fascinating contradictions.
It’s hard to escape the unspoken implication that the person is more complex and relevant than her plays. Ironically, the appeal that her life story holds for biographers like Shields creates something of a downside for theater lovers. Shields’ biography is the latest in a remarkable resurgence of interest that began in 2018 with “Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart,” (a two-hour documentary available on Amazon Prime) followed by Imani Perry’s book Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, and last year’s Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry by Soyica Diggs Colbert. The plaque is enough to explain Lorraine Hansberry’s appeal to biographers – a full and varied life, tragically cut short - and hints at some of the complexities and contradictions that Shields dwells on in Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun (Henry Holt, and 368 pages.) She moved to New York City in 1950, the plaque says, wrote for “Paul Robeson’s Pan Africanist newspaper, Freedom,” married “producer” Robert Nemiroff, but “Later, she was involved with the nation’s first lesbian rights organization, The Daughters of Bilitis.” She inspired Nina Simone’s song “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” “The first African American woman to write a play performed on Broadway,” it begins, then talks about how some of the elements of “A Raisin in the Sun” are based on her parents’ life - how “their purchase of a home in a racially restricted Chicago neighborhood” led to a 1940 Supreme Court decision in their favor. Curious, I walked by the building, and discovered a plaque about her from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation: Shields’ biography of Lorraine Hansberry, the third such book I’ve read in as many years, the author mentions the five-story townhouse near Washington Square Park that Hansberry bought with the money she earned from the success of her play “ A Raisin in the Sun.” It was her home for the final five years of her life, until her death in 1965 at the age of 34.
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