Lorraine Hansberry: A Raisin in the Sun
"Naturalism tends to take the world as it is and say: this is what it is, this is how it happens, it is 'true' because we see it everyday in life that way--you know, you simply photograph the garbage can. But in realism--I think the artist who is creating the realistic work imposes on it not only what is but what is possible...because that is part of reality too" (Lorraine Hansberry). The first African American playwright to have been featured on Broadway, Lorraine Hansberry was born in 1930 to "a successful real estate broker...and a schoolteacher." When Lorraine was eight years old, her father, Carl, purchased a home in Chicago's South Side. This purchase violated a restrictive covenant that ensured the segregation of Chicago's neighborhoods and enraged their white neighbors. The conflict resulted in the court case of Hansberry v. Lee. Her father passed when Lorraine was fifteen years old, and she would later reflect that "American raci...