Struggle to Acquire the American Dream
A Struggle to Acquire the American Dream Lorraine Hansberry, in A Raisin in the Sun, portrays the struggle of a black family to acquire the American Dream in Southside Chicago during the 1950s. ... DuBois, Paul Robeson, Duke Ellington, and Langston Hughes, from whose poem “A Dream Deferred” (Cheney 6-8). ... ” His death at the age of fifty-one seems to have been accelerated by the stress of his constant struggle against racism. ... When considered in light of the fact that she died of duodenal cancer at the very young age of thirty-four, her five plays, the screenplays for “ A Raisin in the Sun,” numerous speeches, letters, and her book, The Movement: Documentary Struggle for Equality, show abundant energy and commitment to hard work for social change. ... Using the particulars of the experiences of American blacks in the 1950s, she illustrates universal characteristics of the human race. ... ” Hansberry was the youngest American, the first woman, and the first black to win this award (Carter ix). ... In the beginning of the play the children are not connected to their family’s history, and not until Asagai talks about his own journey, and the long journey his country will have to real independence, does the connection from Africa, through the Middle Passage to slavery, emancipation, and Mama’s personal struggle become clear. In the face of the long family struggle, they choose to continue that struggle and begin the integration of a Chicago neighborhood. ... The American Dream of equality, a chicken in every pot, the freedom to be who we are, do what we want to, and live in peace and justice under the law, has been the Dream since before the United States was a country. ... ” In 1959, the Dream did not look very bright, but in 1964 the great Civil Rights Act was signed, a genuine milestone in equality in our country. ... Simpson, the Dream is clearly still only a dream to some. Sometimes the Dream looks like Mama’s poor straggly plant – straggly but surviving, and cared for by people who love it. ... Lorraine Hansberry’s play is important to us today because of the ‘universal particular’ that makes it great art, and the reminder that the great work of the American Republic, freedom for all and equal protection under the law, is still not finished. People of all races and cultures dream many of the same dreams as Hansberry’s characters, and parents will dream about the future of their children, adolescents about their own future, and workers will dream about bettering their conditions, for as long as we stay human beings.