LORRAINE HANSBERRY

Acclaimed biographer Shields explores the life and work of one of the most celebrated American playwrights of the 20th century.

Drawing on meticulously researched sources, including previously unpublished interviews and private correspondence, Shields offers an illuminating portrait of Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) and her tragically brief but formidable career. Shields, author of biographies of Kurt Vonnegut and Harper Lee, deftly sets the particularities of Hansberry’s life against a backdrop of relevant themes. These include the Great Migration of African Americans out of the rural South, housing crises in urban centers such as Chicago, intensifying civil rights battles on a variety of fronts, acute concerns over nuclear proliferation, and the appeal of the Communist Party for America’s disenfranchised. The author’s analyses of his subject’s intellectual and literary growth are especially admirable. Raised in a family whose wealth depended on an often predatory mode of capitalism, Hansberry embraced Marxism as a young adult, and the tension created by her commitment to socialism forms one of the most striking subplots of this narrative. Moreover, Shields skillfully locates Hansberry’s evolving ideology within contemporary literary and political movements. For example, the author gives us a clear sense of the influence of Irish playwright Seán O'Casey, of fellow American authors and public intellectuals such as James Baldwin, and of a range of figures interested in critiquing conventional gender roles. As Shields notes of his subject’s immersion in avant-garde critical perspectives, “when there was, as yet, no national feminist discourse coming from any quarter, Hansberry was schooled in woman-centered intersectional thinking by some of the most progressive black women of her day.” The book’s subtitle ultimately delivers on its promise, as the author provides a fascinating view of the personal and cultural forces informing Hansberry’s dramatic masterpiece, A Raisin in the Sun.

A revealing and rewarding biography documenting the life, work, and historical relevance of a great American author.