Reviews
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I’ve never stopped thinking about how this book begins with Harlem by Langston Hughes. What happens to a dream deferred?
Always worth rereading
Really good. Such great messages portrayed.
Always worth rereading
I really have no idea how to express my feelings for this book. Like a lot of recent period pieces, I wish I had been there in 1959 to absorb it. Excellent character development and current topics of the time. A great read. And the American Playhouse version, with the previously deleted scenes, is on YouTube, so I will be catching that soon.
Loved loved loved this play. I read it and then watched the movie. It produces a beautiful narrative on race & gender in the 60’s. Poignant, honest, and powerful. I am so grateful that Lorraine Hansberry was willing to give us a glance into the experiences of a family like the Youngers.
Beautiful!
Beautiful!
Although I've read a bit of 20th-century drama, I had managed never to read this pillar of the genre. It's quite good -- funny, joyful, solemn, and sorrowful -- and certainly remains relevant.
I enjoyed Raisin in the Sun to an extent, the story was good and it had an okay ending, but the characters had the same dimensions, Hansberry could of took the story further and made the characters more complex. It was well written and makes good points about that time era and how blacks were treated and how they worked with it so it's worth reading.
Highlights
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat
Or crust and sugar over—
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
- Langston Hughes
It isn't a circle--it is simply a long line--as in geometry, you know, one that reaches into infinity. And because we cannot see the end--we also cannot see how it changes. And it is very odd by those who see the changes--who dream, who will not give up--are called idealists...and those who see only the circle we call them the "realists"!
Beneatha: Love him? There is nothing left to love.
Mama: There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. (…) 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.
And you—ain't you bitter, man? Ain't you just about had it yet? Don't you see no stars gleaming that you can't reach out and grab? You happy?—You contented son-of-a-bitch—you happy? You got it made? Bitter? Man, I'm a volcano. Bitter? Here I am a giant— surrounded by ants! Ants who cant even understand what it is the giant is talking about.
Walter