Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Hansberry, Lorraine - Julius Lester

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JULIUS LESTER

The subject matter of A Raisin in the Sun may make it appear outdated. The action taking place in what now seems like a long past time—the days before Black Power, antiwar protests, student uprisings and black rebellions. The play concerns itself with the Younger family: Mama Younger, who has survived and won; her son, Walter, the pivotal character of the play, the black male castrated by the blade of the American dream but who blames the castration on his wife; Ruth, Walter's wife, who sees the wound and is unable to stanch the bleeding and, like her Biblical namesake, can say, "Whither thou goest, I will go"—but Walter will not lead; Beneatha, Walter's sister, a college student, a black militant in a day before there was a name for her; and, Joseph Asagai, an African student, with a vision of a black-ruled Africa. Within one apartment, Lorraine Hansberry capsulized so much of black life on a myriad of levels. Here is the black male-black...

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1. Introduction
2. Brooks Atkinson
3. Tom F. Driver
4. Gerald Weales
5. Harold R. Isaacs
6. Stanley Kauffmann
7. John Cutts
8. Walter Kerr
9. Ossie Davis
10. Arthur France
11. C.W.E. Bigsby
12. Gerald Weales
13. Jordan Y. Miller
14. Martin Gottfried
15. Brendan Gill
16. Walter Kerr
17. Harold Clurman
18. George R. Adams
19. David E. Ness
20. Clive Barnes
21. W. Edward Farrison
22. Julius Lester
23. Bertie J. Powell
24. Copyright

1. Lorraine Hansberry