This abhorrence for narrowness and parochialism led her to examine the hidden alliance between racism and sexism long before it was popular to do so, and to shape a vision cognizant of the many dimensions of colonialism and oppression. Anticipating the women’s movement of the 1970s, Hansberry was already aware of the peculiar oppression under which women lived and the particular devastation visited upon women of color.
With the statement “I was born black and a female,”5 Hansberry immediately established the basis for a tension that informed her world view. Her consciousness, of both ethnicity and gender from the very beginning, brought awareness of two key forces of conflict and oppression in the contemporary world. Because she embraced these dual truths despite their implicit competition for her attention (a competition exacerbated by external pressures), her vision was expansive enough to contain and even synthesize what to others would be contradictions. Thus, she was amused in 1955 at progressive friends who protested whenever she posed “so much as an itsy-bitsy analogy between the situation, say, of the Negro people in the U.S.—and women.” She was astonished to be accused by a woman of being bitter and of thinking that men are beasts simply because she expressed the view that women are oppressed. “Must I hate ‘men’ any more than I hate ‘white people’—because some of them are savage and others commit savage acts,” she asked herself. “Of course not!” she answered vehemently.6
This recognition of the tension implicit in her blackness and femaleness was the starting point for her philosophical journey from the South Side of Chicago to the world community. The following quote charts that journey and the expansion of Hansberry’s consciousness, which is unconstrained by culture and gender, but which at the same time refuses to diminish the importance of either.
I was born on the South Side of Chicago. I was born black and a female. I was born in a depression after one world war, and came into my adolescence during another. While I was still in my teens the first atom bombs were dropped on human beings at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And by the time I was twenty-three years old, my government and that of the Soviet Union had entered actively into the worst conflict of nerves in human history—the Cold War.
I have lost friends and relatives through cancer, lynching and war. I have been personally the victim of physical attack which was the offspring of racial and political hysteria. I have worked with the handicapped and seen the ravages of congenital diseases that we have not yet conquered, because we spend our time and ingenuity in far less purposeful wars; I have known persons afflicted with drug addiction and alcoholism and mental illness. I see daily on the streets of New York, street gangs and prostitutes and beggars. I have, like all of you, on a thousand occasions seen indescribable displays of man’s very real inhumanity to man, and I have come to maturity, as we all must, knowing that greed and malice and indifference to human misery and bigotry and corruption, brutality, and perhaps above all else, ignorance—the prime ancient and persistent enemy of man—abound in this world.
I say all of this to say that one cannot live with sighted eyes and feeling heart and not know and react to the miseries which afflict this world.7
Her “sighted eyes and feeling heart” were what enabled her to hear the wail of her own people in O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, a play steeped in Irish history and tradition. And those eloquent moans sent her forth to capture that collective cry in a black idiom.
Hansberry’s cognizance of being black and female formed the basis for her comprehensive world-view. Just as she could accept fully the implications and responsibility of both blackness and femaleness, so was she also aware of the many other competing and equally legitimate causes which grow out of humankind’s misery. The one issue that deeply concerned her but that she did not address publicly was homosexuality. The repressive atmosphere of the 1950s, coupled with the homophobia of the general society, including politically left organizations, caused her to suppress her writings that explored issues of sexuality and gender relations. Nevertheless, she pushed and teased these boundaries by probing the nature of the individual within the specifics of culture, ethnicity, and gender. In the midst of her expansiveness, she refused to diminish the pain, suffering or truths of any one group in order to benefit another, a factor which made her plays particularly rich and her characters thoroughly complex. Hence, she could write authentically about a black family in A Raisin in the Sun and yet produce, in the same instance, a play which appealed to both blacks and whites, bridging for a moment the historical and cultural gaps between them.
Her universalism, which redefines that much abused term, grew out of a deep, complex encounter with the specific terms of human experience as it occurs for blacks, women, whites, and many other groups of people. Her universalism was not facile, nor did it gloss over the things that divide people. She engaged those issues, worked through them to find whatever may be, a priori, the human commonality that lies beneath. It was as if she believed that one can understand and embrace the human family (with all its familial warfare) only to the extent that one can engage the truths (however partisan they may seem) of a social, cultural individual. “We must turn our eyes outward,” she wrote, “but to do so we must also turn them inward toward our people and their complex and still transitory culture.”8 When she turned inward, she saw not only color but gender as well—a prism of humanity.
Her best-known play, A Raisin in the Sun, dramatizes the seductiveness of American materialistic values. The title and theme are taken from a Langston Hughes poem, “Harlem,” which asks: “What happens to a dream deferred?” The dreams of the Youngers, a black family living in South Side Chicago, have gone unfulfilled too long. Their hopes of enjoying the fruits of freedom and equality have been postponed as they struggle merely to survive economically. Into this setting comes $10,000 insurance money paid upon the death of Walter Younger, Sr. Lena Younger (Mama) and her adult son, Walter, clash over the money’s use. Mama wants to save some for her daughter Beneatha’s college education and make a down payment on a new house in order to get the family out of the cramped quarters and shared bathroom of their tiny apartment. Walter wants to invest in a liquor store. They share the dream of improving the family’s situation, but Walter, consumed with the frustrations of his dead-end chauffeur’s job, believes that the money itself is synonymous with life. The possession of money and the things it can buy will make him a man in the eyes of his family and society, he asserts. His is a popular notion of manhood, which rests on the hidden oppression of the very women he loves, and ultimately, of black men as well.
The intrusion of American cultural values is evident both in this tug of war and in the character of Lena. Mama, who initially fits the popular stereotype of the Black Mammy, seems to be the domineering head of the household. She rules everyone’s life, even making a down payment on a house in an all-white neighborhood without consulting her son. However, as she begins to comprehend the destructive effect of her actions on Walter, she relinquishes her authority and gives him the balance of the money to invest as he wishes. Walter’s elation is short-lived, however, because he loses the money by entrusting it to his “partner,” a slick con man who disappears. In an effort to recover his loss, Walter tells his family that he will accept money from his prospective neighbors who would rather buy him off than live next door to him. The decision is a personal test for Walter, for he is sorely tempted to sacrifice his pride and integrity for mercenary values: “There ain’t no causes—there ain’t nothing but taking in this world, and he who takes most is smartest—and it don’t make a damn bit of difference how.”9 In a highly dramatic moment, Walter gets down on his knees and shows his mother how he will beg, if necessary, for the white man’s money—scratching his head and laughing in the style of the old Uncle Tom. Even with this display, Mama does not berate him, but, rather, surrounds him with her circle of love and compassion, saying to others who have witnessed this scene:
Have you cried for that boy today? I don’t mean for yourself and f
or the family ’cause we lost the money. I mean for him: what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain’t through learning—because that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ’cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.10
Just as the stereotyped image of the Mammy gives way to the caring, understanding mother, historic cornerstone of the black family, so the materialism of Walter crumbles before his reaffirmation of traditional values of pride and selfhood. He tells the baffled representative of the hostile white community that he and his family will move into their house because his father and the generations before him earned that right. Walter speaks the words and takes the action, but Mama provides the context. She, who embodies the race’s will to transcend and who forms that critical link between the past and the future, articulates and transmits the traditions of the race to the next generation. Her wisdom and compassion provide the context for him to attain true manhood, to advance materially without becoming materialistic.
The story of the Younger family is the story of a struggle to retain human values and integrity while forcing change in a society where human worth is measured by the dollar. Through the supporting character, Asagai, an African intellectual, the personal dynamics of that struggle become a microcosm of the struggle for liberation throughout the world and especially in Africa. Hansberry achieves this connection through Asagai’s response to Walter’s foolish mistake. He warns the disappointed Beneatha that she is using her brother’s error as an excuse to give up on “the ailing human race” and her own participation in it. Beneatha argues that Walter’s action is no different from the pettiness, ignorance, and foolishness of other men who turn idealistic notions of freedom and independence into absurd dreams. But Asagai reacts vehemently, proclaiming that one mistake does not stop a movement. Others will correct that mistake and go on, probably to make errors of their own—but the result, however halting, is movement, change and advancement forward. Thus, in a parallel action, Asagai affirms Mama’s loving support of Walter by restating her position in the sociopolitical terms of African freedom struggles. While Mama may seem to be merely conservative, clinging to an older generation, it is she who, in fact, is the mother of revolutionaries; it is she who makes possible the change and movement of the new generation.
Despite Mama’s importance to the theme, Walter remains a worthy and unique counterpoint. In his own way, Walter signals the wave of the future. He is restless, hungry, angry—a victim of his circumstance but at the same time the descendant of his proud forebears, struggling to transcend his victimhood. When he, in a drunken flare, leaps onto a table and assumes the stance of an African chieftain, he unconsciously embodies that proud and revolutionary spirit which is his heritage. When he quietly refuses the white citizens’ payoff at the end of the play, he becomes the symbolic father of the aggressive, articulate black characters who will stride the boards in the 1960s. Indeed, Walter, who has begun to shed the materialism of the majority culture, leads the march to a different drum.
Testimony to Hansberry’s craftsmanship is the fact that these complex themes and perceptions are presented unobtrusively, emerging naturally as a result of action and dialogue. A master of heightened realism, she carefully orchestrates the moods of the play, using highly symbolic, nonrealistic actions when needed and guiding both performer and audience through a maze of emotional and humorous moments. The play makes a social statement, but not at the expense of its ability to engage. In fact, the miracle of this popular play is that Hansberry successfully involves her audience, of all colors, in a complete identification and support for the struggles of this family.
The next Hansberry play which the public would see was The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. By the time it opened on Broadway in 1964, Hansberry’s cancer had already been diagnosed, and she was in and out of hospitals, often needing a wheelchair to get to and from rehearsals. Opening to mixed critical reviews, Sign played for 101 performances and closed the night of her death, January 12, 1965. It was destined to go down in theatrical history books as a triumph, however, because a loving public and her theater colleagues fought to keep it open, raising money and donating time to help it survive.
A play of ideas, Sign angered and confused critics for two basic reasons. First, it was not about the black experience; in fact, it had only one black character in it. Lorraine Hansberry, hailed by the establishment as a new black voice, had written about white artists and intellectuals who lived in Greenwich Village. Second, the play firmly opposed the vogue of urbane, sophisticated ennui and the glorification of intellectual impotence so typical of the period. It dared to challenge the apathy of the American intellectual and his indifference to the serious problems overtaking the world.
In this play, plot is secondary to character and serves only as a vehicle for Sidney Brustein’s personal odyssey toward self-discovery. Sidney has agreed to work on the campaign of a local politician who has promised to bring social reform to his New York neighborhood. Through a series of confrontations with family and friends, Sidney is given an intimate look at the human frailties which lie behind the mask of each character. The most startling revelations center on his wife and sisters-in-law: Iris, his beautiful, long-haired protégée who no longer wishes to play the ingenue role and desires instead the tinsel of stardom; Gloria, the sensitive call girl who commits suicide because she cannot bear her burden of guilt and loneliness; and Mavis, the bourgeois Philistine whose image belies the painful compromise and courage of her personal life. Sidney, Hansberry’s symbol of modern man, stares human ugliness full in the face and seems powerless against it: “Wrath has become a poisoned gastric juice in the intestine. One does not smite evil anymore: one holds one’s gut, thus—and takes a pill.”11
When he discovers the duplicity and corruption of his politician friend, he has every reason to return to his posture of intellectual apathy, condemning in colorful prose the world around him. But his odyssey through the maze of human suffering has changed him; Gloria’s death has changed him:
That which warped and distorted all of us is … all around; it is in this very air! This world—this swirling, seething madness—which you ask us to accept, to help maintain—has done this … maimed my friends … emptied these rooms and my very bed. And now it has taken my sister. This world! Therefore, to live, to breathe—I shall have to fight it!
…
[I am] A fool who believes that death is waste and love is sweet and that the earth turns and men change every day and that rivers run and that people wanna be better than they are and that flowers smell good and that I hurt terribly today, and that hurt is desperation and desperation is—energy and energy can move things …12
This strong affirmation of life in the face of human frailty and cosmic absurdity was unusual in the world of professional theater, but very consistent with the beliefs of Lorraine Hansberry.
Upon the author’s death in 1965, two of the plays in this volume—What Use Are Flowers? and Les Blancs—remained essentially unfinished works. Only The Drinking Gourd was complete, having been commissioned in 1959 for the National Broadcasting Company. It was to be the first in a series of ninety-minute television dramas commemorating the Centennial of the Civil War. It was never produced. Deemed too controversial for the American television-viewing public, it was put on the shelf with notations commending its excellence and was later published posthumously by Robert Nemiroff.
Named for the Negro slave song which contained a coded message of escape, The Drinking Gourd is an incisive analysis and indictment of American slavery as a self-perpetuating system based on the exploitation of cheap labor. More than a historical piece, this provocative work identifi
es the slave system as the basis for the country’s economic philosophy and later capitalistic development; it dramatizes the devastating psychological and physical impact of the slave institution on both master and slave. As in A Raisin in the Sun, the message is not delivered in a heavy-handed manner, but is derived from the characters and actions of the drama.
Three distinct classes of people are a part of this world of slavery: the master, the slave, and the poor white. During the course of the play, set at the beginning of the Civil War, the impact of the slave system on each class is starkly portrayed, with each becoming a victim of its economic realities. Hiram Sweet is the ailing master of a slave plantation which is losing money, in part because Hiram’s relatively humane policies do not produce enough to compete favorably with larger, less “liberal” plantations. The slave Hannibal, son of Rissa, who is Hiram’s confidante, is contemptuous of his situation and is preparing to escape. Zeb, a poor white farmer, finds that he is being squeezed out by the larger plantations and so agrees to become an overseer on Hiram’s land—against the advice of his friend.
Although Hiram is sensitive enough to be uneasy about the morality of slavery, he is not perceptive enough to recognize his ultimate powerlessness as a master. In an angry speech justifying a special favor he is granting to Rissa’s son, Hiram says to his wife: “I am master of this plantation and every soul on it.… I am master of this house as well.… There are some men born into this world who make their own destiny. Men who do not tolerate the rules of other men or other forces.”
However, as Hiram’s health fails, the control of the plantation is taken over by his immature, simpleminded son, Everett. The opposite of his father, Everett runs the plantation with a harsh hand, hiring Zeb to enforce his new policies. When Everett discovers that Hannibal has learned to read, he orders Zeb to carry out a brutal punishment—to put out Hannibal’s eyes. The blinding of Hannibal shatters the illusion that slavery can be redeemed from its moral bankruptcy. The master cannot protect the son of a woman for whom he cares; the slave’s friendship with the master cannot prevent a human catastrophe; and the poor white farmer cannot maintain any semblance of self-respect and humanity while being an overseer. The disease of the slave institution infects them all.
Les Blancs Page 3