The Story Archive

A Raisin in the Sun

Lorraine Hansberry · 1959 CE · Play · Modern / American · Contemporary

Three generations of the Younger family share a South Side kitchenette with the bathroom down the hall, waiting on a ten-thousand-dollar insurance check for the father who worked himself to death: the widow wants a house with a yard, her son wants a liquor store and to be spoken to like a man, her daughter wants medical school and asks aloud what an American Negro owes to Africa. A representative of the improvement association in the white suburb where the down payment has gone calls at the apartment with an offer to buy the family out. The first play by a Black woman produced on Broadway, and the work that opened the American stage to the domestic interior of Black life.

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Lineage

Attributes

Genre
PoliticalPsychological
Theme
The American DreamRace & IdentityClass & InequalityMotherhood
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
The Great MotherEverymanHeroine
Plot structure
Tragic Reversal
Symbol / motif
The HouseThe GardenThe Threshold
Conflict
vs Societyvs Self
Mode / tone
Realist
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues