Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

 

 Raisin in the Sun 

by Lorraine Hansberry

 

Description

"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.

Review

“A beautiful, lovable play. It is affectionately human, funny and touching. . . . A work of theatrical magic in which the usual barrier between audience and stage disappears.”
John Chapman, New York News

“An honest, intelligible, and moving experience.”
Walter Kerr, New York Herald Tribune

“Miss Hansberry has etched her characters with understanding, and told her story with dramatic impact. She has a keen sense of humor, an ear for accurate speech and compassion for people.”
Robert Coleman, New York Mirror

“A Raisin in the Sun has vigor as well as veracity.”
Brooks Atkinson, New York Times

“It is honest drama, catching up real people. . . . It will make you proud of human beings.”
Frank Aston, New York World-Telegram & Sun

“A wonderfully emotional evening.”
John McClain, New York Journal American

From the Inside Flap

When it was first produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life. "A play that changed American theater forever."--The New York Times.

From the Back Cover

When it was first produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life. "A play that changed American theater forever."--The New York Times.

About the Author

 Lorraine Hansberry, at twenty-nine, became the youngest American, the fifth woman, and the first black playwright to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the Best Play of the Year. Her  A Raisin in the Sun has since been published and produced in some 30 countries, while her film adaptation was nominated by the New York critics for the Best Screenplay and received a Cannes Film Festival Award. At thirty-four, during the run of her second play,  The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Lorraine Hansberry died of cancer. In the years since her death, her stature has continued to grow.  To Be Young, Gifted and Black, a dramatic portrait of the playwright in her own words, was the longest-running Off-Broadway drama of 1969, and has been recorded, filmed, and published in expanded book form, and has toured an unprecedented forty states and two hundred colleges. In 1986, following the stage production of the 25th anniversary of  A Raisin in the Sun by the Roundabout Theatre in New York City, the play was widely acclaimed as in the foremost ranks of American classics. In 1990, the PBS  American Playhouse TV adaptation of the 25th-anniversary version had one of the highest viewing audiences in PBS history.  Les Blancs, her last play—posthumously performed on Broadway and recently in prominent regional theaters—has been hailed by a number of critics as her best.

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Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

   

 Catch-22

 by Joseph Heller

Coined by American author Joseph Heller in 1961 in his novel Catch-22, in which the main character feigns madness in order to avoid dangerous combat missions, but his desire to avoid them is taken to prove his sanity. Wikipedia 

 About the Author

Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known work is the 1961 novel Catch-22, a satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has become a synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice. Wikipedia

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Invisible Man Novel by Ralph Ellison

 

 

 Invisible Man 

by Ralph Ellison

 

 Invisible Man is a novel by Ralph Ellison, published by Random House in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues faced by African Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity. Wikipedia

Cover Artist: E. McKnight Kauffer
Characters: Ras the Exhorter, Brother Jack, Invisible Man, Rinehart, Tod Clifton

About the Author

Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913 – April 16, 1994) was an American novelist, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social, and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986). The New York Times dubbed him "among the gods of America's literary Parnassus." A posthumous novel, Juneteenth, was published after being assembled from voluminous notes he left upon his death. Wikipedia

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Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

    

 

Their Eyes Were Watching God 

by Zora Neale Hurston

  Description  

One of the most important work of 20th Century American literature, Zora Neale Hurston’s beloved 1937 classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an enduring southern love stroy sparkling with wit, beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in the captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fair – skinned, fiercely independent janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose. A true literary wonder, Hurston’s masterwork remains as relevant and affecting today as when it was first published – perhaps the most widely read and highly regarded novel in the entire canon of African American literature.  

About the Author

 Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist. An author of four novel ( Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934; Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937; Moses, Man of the Mountain, 1939; and seraph on the Suwanee,
1948); two Books of folklore ( Mules and Men, 1935, and Tell My Horse, 1938); an autobiography ( Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942); and over fifty short stories, essays, and plays. She attended Howard University, Barnard College and Columbia University, and was a graduate of Barnard College in.1927. She was born on january 7,1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Eatonville, Florida. She died in Fort Pierce, in 1960. In 1937, Alice Walker had a headstone placed at her gravestie with this epitaph: “Zora Neale Horston : A Genius of the South.”

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Also see:

• Buy Zora Neale Hurston's Books at Amazon
• There Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston | Foreword & PDF

Mule and Men by Zora Neale Hurston

Mule and Men

 by Zora Neale Hurston

Mules and Men is a 1935 autoethnographical collection of African-American folklore collected and written by anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. The book explores stories she collected in two trips: one in Eatonville and Polk County, Florida, and one in New Orleans. Hurston's decision to focus her research on Florida came from a desire to record the cross-section of black traditions in the state. In her introduction to Mules and Men, she wrote, "Florida is a place that draws people—white people from all over the world, and Negroes from every Southern state surely and some from the North and West". Hurston documented 70 folktales during the Florida trip, while the New Orleans trip yielded a number of stories about Marie Laveau, voodoo and Hoodoo traditions. In addition, Hurston wrote about her experience being initiated into Hoodoo. Wikipedia

About the Author

Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, an anthropologist. An author of four novel ( Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934; Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937; Moses, Man of the Mountain, 1939; and seraph on the Suwanee,
1948); two Books of folklore ( Mules and Men, 1935, and Tell My Horse, 1938); an autobiography ( Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942); and over fifty short stories, essays, and plays. She attended Howard University, Barnard College and Columbia University, and was a graduate of Barnard College in.1927. She was born on january 7,1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Eatonville, Florida. She died in Fort Pierce, in 1960. In 1937, Alice Walker had a headstone placed at her gravestie with this epitaph: “Zora Neale Horston : A Genius of the South.”

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Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

 

Catcher in the Rye 

by J D Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel by J. D. Salinger, partially published in serial form in 1945–1946 and as a novel in 1951. It was originally intended for adults but is often read by adolescents for its themes of angst, alienation, and as a critique on superficiality in society. It has been translated widely. About one million copies are sold each year, with total sales of more than 65 million books. The novel's protagonist Holden Caulfield has become an icon for teenage rebellion. The novel also deals with complex issues of innocence, identity, belonging, loss, connection, sex, and depression. Wikipedia

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

 

 

To Kill a Mockingbird 

 

by Harper Lee

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960. Instantly successful, widely read in middle and high schools in the United States, it has become a classic of modern American literature, winning the Pulitzer Prize. She wrote the novel Go Set a Watchman in the mid-1950s and published it in July 2015 as a sequel to Mockingbird, but it was later confirmed to be merely her first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. Wikipedia

 Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird is the most important novel ever authored by a native Alabamian. The Pulitzer Prize–winning novel spent 88 weeks on bestseller lists, and by the 50th anniversary of its publication in 2010 had sold some 40 million copies. It continues to sell around a million copies a year and is often ranked among the world's best-sellers. The themes and issues raised in the novel remain relevant, and thus To Kill A Mockingbird will likely hold its place in public discourse on tolerance, justice, and humanity. The Encyclopedia of Alabama

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