Hansberry was way ahead of her time; some would say she's still ahead of our time. She was a lesbian (activist behind the scenes, as she was not out), was the first black woman to have a play on broadway, was besties with James Baldwin and Nina Simone (inspiring her song "Young Gifted and Black"), and was reportedly one of the few people who could out-debate Malcolm X. (Malcolm risked attending her funeral in disguise as he was in hiding.) Truly an unsung hero. (Oh, and she's also my great aunt -- my great uncle was Bob Nemiroff.)
Lisa Black Bob was married to Lorraine, supporting her financially while she wrote Raisin; still working as her creative partner after they divorced and as her executor after her death. He completed and published Les Blancs.
Lisa Black She was not “out” as a lesbian, but it has become common knowledge from journal writings that were released in the decades following her death.
Hansberry explains so cleary how she wrote this complex work for each character so well and not have a centralized character to carry the narrative...this is brilliant.
Interview takes place in the apartment of Lorraine Hansberry's sister or mother Is A Raisin In the Sun A Negro Play 1:10 In order to create the universal you must pay attention to the specific 2:24 Protest Plays & White Guilt (I Take A Giant and Deeper the Roots) 3:52 Walter Lee Younger "Affirmative hero" and principled decisions 6:07 Willie Loman and John Proctor 8:47 The Black matriarch symbol of strength 10:29 Women the most oppressed group 12:23 Sean O Casey and his works 13:17 "Technical Dramaturgy" (Naturalism vs. Realism) 15:35 Is A Raisin in the Sun autobiographical? "We are one people" 19:42 Who amongst us decides our political history and political future? 20:26 Beneatha (character from A Raisin in the Sun) is VERY autobigraphical 21:35 Criticisms of A Raisin in the Sun 22:51 Lorraine's favorite character in A Raisin in the Sun and his function in the play 25:26 Reclamation of African Past 28:02 Asagai vs. Nkrumah and Kenyatta 29:16 Hansberry responds to allegations of Asagai's idealism 30:17 Upcoming Projects 31:57 Cultural outsiders who write about Negroes 32:56 Does art need to tell the truth 35:00 Hansberry's opinion of James Baldwin 35:52 On Richard Wright 38:10 Skepticism of Baldwin's ability (ironically states "I don't know if his eyes are that wide" 39:39) Closing words "I always have something to say" 42:42
lifestraight Bruh. *Bruh.* Do you annotate other videos? Do you have a playlist of videos you’ve time-stamped? This is valuable work, lifestraight. Well fuckin done. Thank you, InternetHomie.
@@BuildingCenter Lmao I do provide the time stamp for other videos but I don't have a playlist of them. I probably could make one tho. And I'm glad you appreciate the work man. You're welcome!
Loved hearing her dissect the technical aspects of writing. She certainly was very mature and intelligent. Hard to believe she was only twenty nine at the time. Hansberry was a most appealing person. Even if you don't agree with her, the honesty and strength of her convictions is impressive. And then, there's that disarming smile of hers.
What we have here are two great Chicagoans - Ms. Hansberry, a brilliant mind and the daughter of Black people who didn't mind fighting for their place on this American soil. And Studs Terkel, a Jewish journalist in the city who stood for "everyman," and tried to interview them all. Always giving the person being interviewed full respect. Today's interviews are trite by comparison. Thanks for posting.
Can't begin to describe my admiration for this woman. One of the most tragic premature deaths ever at 34. Having already contributed so much to American literature, she was just beginning., and could still very muchl be with us today. Bravo to Studs Terkel for capturing this invaluable content on time
@@aharper12 Yes. She was very eloquent and articulate. As far as her speech goes I believe Imani Perry (one of Hansberry's biographers) wrote that she spoke in a way that was typical for educated Black folk to speak at that time and referenced her conversations with James Baldwin. His elocution was similar. I love listening to both of them but not for the style in which they speak but the information, the wisdom, the insight.
Thank you for the audio video of the Studs Turkel-Lorraine Hansberry interview of 1959, leading up to the opening of her award winning play, A Raisin in the Sun, on Broadway. I appreciated her views on race, her relationships with other noted black writers of the time (James Baldwin, Richard Wright), and the coming of the progressive movement in the U.S., particularly through the eyes of the Younger family in A Raisin in the Sun. She was so powerfully gifted, and was lost from the world at 34 years of age. Again, thanks for the upload.
What a voice, clear, strong, honest, holding nothing back both in her writting and in public speaking. This language is a sound of the past...I miss it.
"Sooner or later, in America, we are gonna have to make some decisions (based on good sound and honest Principles). What a prophetic statement that America finds herself in now... So here here where the GREA American Play "A Raisen In The Sun..." began... A truly great American writer and at SUCH a YOUNG age... WOW! This Piece is indeed worthy of all it's Awards!!! -P.C. Payne, 5/2023.
You listen to her and you move past the spellbound and into real learning.. Her divergence from James Baldwin is interesting to hear, and it becomes clear, I think, where they differ, much in the way Tolstoy and Dostoevsky differ. Baldwin and Dostoevsky approached societal issues from within, through the individual and the individual's psyche, the individual's emotional responses to the outside world and to the self, self responding to self. (That's also one of Shakespeare's hallmarks, self responding to self.) Tolstoy and Hansberry consider the world from above it, looking down and seeing how all the external pieces move around and alongside each other. So when she claims Baldwin "feels a lot but I'm not sure what he sees," she can't do anything but claim that. Her art assessed a worldview's effect on the world; Baldwin's assessed that worldview's effect on the people who were trying to just live through it. That doesn't make them exclusive of each other, just different from. (You can hear this in Baldwin's somewhat exasperated reply in the Nikki Giovanni interview, when he tries to explain why an abused black man would come home and take it out on his family, as Giovanni tries to condemn that man for not having the good sense not to visit his own pain on his loved ones. Baldwin, in that scolding to Giovanni, very much takes the individualist approach and explains it, while never excusing it.)
I recognize the distinctive voice of the interviewer, the great oral historian, Studs Terkel, who never gave a bad interview. Studs was definitely a leftist and supporter of civil and economic rights.
@SwarthySkinnedOne Thanks for calling this out. Speaks to why its been hard for me to find others to connect with in person on the ideas in the interview.
Quite apart from the stream of provocative opinions and brilliant insights, I find myself wondering why Americans aren't this articulate any more? You could simply transcribe Hansberry's speech and publish it with hardly any changes or corrections. Complete, correct, elegant sentences. Refined, precise diction. No hemming and hawing, no slang or grammatical glitches. And what a voice!
And meanwhile you’re more concentrated on _how_ someone says something rather than what they’re saying or why they say it. I agree that Lorraine’s voice is beautiful and her words are great, but don’t use that as a culturally-conservative weapon. She speaks the way she speaks, and other people speak the way they speak. Why not assess words for what they are rather than assess words for _how_ they are? Furthermore, this even goes against what Lorraine seemingly stands for. She’d read your comment and probably recoil at that; because otherwise why would she write play-after-play where the characters speak in heavy slang/AAV? Why would she support and comfortably talk with/work with other artists who speak in slang like Langston Hughes?
@@Peace8267 The person that commented assessed both the "what" and "how". When you say someone has a brilliant insight, you are speaking about their message over their delivery. Also, I think you would have to have a wealth of knowledge to effectively deliver a message in multiple vernaculars which is what Hansberry did. The commenter was simply pointing out her complete control of what we call standard English. It does not take away from her message at all.
@@JM-sd5dt I didn't say this person overlooked what Lorraine Hansberry was saying, more so this whole entire rhetoric of "why doesn't anybody speak like this anymore?" is kind of reductive and micro-aggressive, for many reasons. They straight up said that there is a "correct" way of speaking English, and that, somehow, Lorraine Hansberry's is an example of that "correct speech;" this overshadows many things, such as the 30 _major_ dialects spoken in the US alone, the way in which black American speech has evolved differently from white American speech, and even just the fact that--while to us she's speaking "refined"--there will be many, many other people who will still scrutinize the way she speaks. You can also be very, very knowledgeable and yet still articulate yourself in a way that people would consider "improper." You can be a profound linguist and speak with heavy slang (i.e.: James Baldwin spoke in slang a lot, but he also knew French as a second language, and didn't learn the language formally). Hell, you can be mute but still be a genius; language is only one aspect of the human mind. To put it simply: this commenter put Lorraine's speech on a pedestal, a pedestal which is very narrow (on a cultural _and_ linguistic basis), and also one that she herself would probably be very uncomfortable with. She's even implied in this interview how she finds beauty in the way that Irish and Black speech is very derivative from the norm. A part of me has to ask to: of all the things that Lorraine's said in this interview, how much has _really_ stuck with you if this was the only thing you felt the need to comment? As a black person myself, who also reads and writes a lot, people act "shocked" when they see how "articulate and grammatically correct" I am, and I know exactly what they mean by that. It's something that's made me uncomfortable and invalidated; I'm more than sure that Lorraine Hansberry would feel the same. She's someone who can see right through microaggressions and swiftly combats them as a response, as seen with the interview she had with Mike Wallace.
@@Peace8267 The commenter said American and not black women or black people. I think you added culture in your interpretation because Hansberry is black. I think the commenter was saying her speech is eloquent and any American should aspire to her way of speaking.
yes, Raisin in the Sun transcends categorization. It's not a "Racial Play." indubitably universal themes: "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life." Proverbs 13:22 Harlem by Langston Hughes "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?
Hansberry was way ahead of her time; some would say she's still ahead of our time. She was a lesbian (activist behind the scenes, as she was not out), was the first black woman to have a play on broadway, was besties with James Baldwin and Nina Simone (inspiring her song "Young Gifted and Black"), and was reportedly one of the few people who could out-debate Malcolm X. (Malcolm risked attending her funeral in disguise as he was in hiding.) Truly an unsung hero. (Oh, and she's also my great aunt -- my great uncle was Bob Nemiroff.)
Wow
Im a writer, u have alot 2 be proud of. If you dont write start
Lisa Black Bob was married to Lorraine, supporting her financially while she wrote Raisin; still working as her creative partner after they divorced and as her executor after her death. He completed and published Les Blancs.
Lisa Black She was not “out” as a lesbian, but it has become common knowledge from journal writings that were released in the decades following her death.
Much love and respect, brother!!! She's certainly my inspiration and deeply personal favorites. 💕🎭✏
@@vexationstorm9998 thansk!
Hansberry explains so cleary how she wrote this complex work for each character so well and not have a centralized character to carry the narrative...this is brilliant.
Interview takes place in the apartment of Lorraine Hansberry's sister or mother
Is A Raisin In the Sun A Negro Play 1:10
In order to create the universal you must pay attention to the specific 2:24
Protest Plays & White Guilt (I Take A Giant and Deeper the Roots) 3:52
Walter Lee Younger "Affirmative hero" and principled decisions 6:07
Willie Loman and John Proctor 8:47
The Black matriarch symbol of strength 10:29
Women the most oppressed group 12:23
Sean O Casey and his works 13:17
"Technical Dramaturgy" (Naturalism vs. Realism) 15:35
Is A Raisin in the Sun autobiographical? "We are one people" 19:42
Who amongst us decides our political history and political future? 20:26
Beneatha (character from A Raisin in the Sun) is VERY autobigraphical 21:35
Criticisms of A Raisin in the Sun 22:51
Lorraine's favorite character in A Raisin in the Sun and his function in the play 25:26
Reclamation of African Past 28:02
Asagai vs. Nkrumah and Kenyatta 29:16
Hansberry responds to allegations of Asagai's idealism 30:17
Upcoming Projects 31:57
Cultural outsiders who write about Negroes 32:56
Does art need to tell the truth 35:00
Hansberry's opinion of James Baldwin 35:52
On Richard Wright 38:10
Skepticism of Baldwin's ability (ironically states "I don't know if his eyes are that wide" 39:39)
Closing words "I always have something to say" 42:42
lifestraight Bruh.
*Bruh.*
Do you annotate other videos? Do you have a playlist of videos you’ve time-stamped? This is valuable work, lifestraight. Well fuckin done. Thank you, InternetHomie.
@@BuildingCenter Lmao I do provide the time stamp for other videos but I don't have a playlist of them. I probably could make one tho. And I'm glad you appreciate the work man. You're welcome!
Doing the Lords work. Thank you sir
Loved hearing her dissect the technical aspects of writing. She certainly was very mature and intelligent. Hard to believe she was only twenty nine at the time. Hansberry was a most appealing person. Even if you don't agree with her, the honesty and strength of her convictions is impressive. And then, there's that disarming smile of hers.
I wish we had studied her in high school or even college...…. seems like the curriculum needs to be updated seriously; in all cities.
She was so intelligent and well spoken. A Raisin In The Sun is my favorite play and my favorite classic movie.
What we have here are two great Chicagoans - Ms. Hansberry, a brilliant mind and the daughter of Black people who didn't mind fighting for their place on this American soil. And Studs Terkel, a Jewish journalist in the city who stood for "everyman," and tried to interview them all. Always giving the person being interviewed full respect. Today's interviews are trite by comparison. Thanks for posting.
Can't begin to describe my admiration for this woman. One of the most tragic premature deaths ever at 34. Having already contributed so much to American literature, she was just beginning., and could still very muchl be with us today. Bravo to Studs Terkel for capturing this invaluable content on time
I agree, she was very good with explaining things to the interviewer as well as being herself and not hiding her true self from anyone
Lorraine Hansberry is a wordsmith. She speaks so eloquently and profoundly.
She was a genius. Thanks for uploading!
Love this. God rest her soul.
Her voice😍🤤 thank you for uploading this
Right, her elocution is beautiful.
@@aharper12 Yes. She was very eloquent and articulate. As far as her speech goes I believe Imani Perry (one of Hansberry's biographers) wrote that she spoke in a way that was typical for educated Black folk to speak at that time and referenced her conversations with James Baldwin. His elocution was similar. I love listening to both of them but not for the style in which they speak but the information, the wisdom, the insight.
@@aharper12 , her eloquence is unmatched.
I think her voice is my favorite voice I've ever heard. It's beautiful
Thank you for the audio video of the Studs Turkel-Lorraine Hansberry interview of 1959, leading up to the opening of her award winning play, A Raisin in the Sun, on Broadway. I appreciated her views on race, her relationships with other noted black writers of the time (James Baldwin, Richard Wright), and the coming of the progressive movement in the U.S., particularly through the eyes of the Younger family in A Raisin in the Sun. She was so powerfully gifted, and was lost from the world at 34 years of age. Again, thanks for the upload.
Beauty of us in its finest💛📣
What a voice, clear, strong, honest, holding nothing back both in her writting and in public speaking. This language is a sound of the past...I miss it.
"Sooner or later, in America, we are gonna have to make some decisions (based on good sound and honest Principles). What a prophetic statement that America finds herself in now... So here here where the GREA American Play "A Raisen
In The Sun..." began... A truly great American writer and at SUCH a YOUNG age... WOW! This Piece is indeed worthy of all it's Awards!!! -P.C. Payne, 5/2023.
You listen to her and you move past the spellbound and into real learning.. Her divergence from James Baldwin is interesting to hear, and it becomes clear, I think, where they differ, much in the way Tolstoy and Dostoevsky differ. Baldwin and Dostoevsky approached societal issues from within, through the individual and the individual's psyche, the individual's emotional responses to the outside world and to the self, self responding to self. (That's also one of Shakespeare's hallmarks, self responding to self.) Tolstoy and Hansberry consider the world from above it, looking down and seeing how all the external pieces move around and alongside each other. So when she claims Baldwin "feels a lot but I'm not sure what he sees," she can't do anything but claim that. Her art assessed a worldview's effect on the world; Baldwin's assessed that worldview's effect on the people who were trying to just live through it. That doesn't make them exclusive of each other, just different from. (You can hear this in Baldwin's somewhat exasperated reply in the Nikki Giovanni interview, when he tries to explain why an abused black man would come home and take it out on his family, as Giovanni tries to condemn that man for not having the good sense not to visit his own pain on his loved ones. Baldwin, in that scolding to Giovanni, very much takes the individualist approach and explains it, while never excusing it.)
well said...
A beautiful and sophisticated black woman.
I recognize the distinctive voice of the interviewer, the great oral historian, Studs Terkel, who never gave a bad interview. Studs was definitely a leftist and supporter of civil and economic rights.
Lowell Denny If one is a leftist, then one probably doesn’t believe in civil rights and certainly does not believe in economic rights.
@@TheGodYouWishYouKnew hogwash!
lifestraight Yup. Those leftists are renowned for their belief in economic autonomy. Eye roll emoji
An intelligent man who appreciates excellence.
The interviewer is clearly gushing. I don’t blame him, it must be overwhelming to be in the presence of true genius.
Very nice indeed.
OK there's been 3.1k views, and so far only fiiiiive comments?????
I find it quite telling.
@SwarthySkinnedOne Thanks for calling this out. Speaks to why its been hard for me to find others to connect with in person on the ideas in the interview.
R.I.P Lorraine Hansberry
Traditionally, the older woman is respected for her wisdom. Traditionally the man
respected her wisdom.
Idk why but I listen to this to sleep oof
Doing that right now.. she was relaxed into her own genius mann
Quite apart from the stream of provocative opinions and brilliant insights, I find myself wondering why Americans aren't this articulate any more? You could simply transcribe Hansberry's speech and publish it with hardly any changes or corrections. Complete, correct, elegant sentences. Refined, precise diction. No hemming and hawing, no slang or grammatical glitches. And what a voice!
And meanwhile you’re more concentrated on _how_ someone says something rather than what they’re saying or why they say it. I agree that Lorraine’s voice is beautiful and her words are great, but don’t use that as a culturally-conservative weapon. She speaks the way she speaks, and other people speak the way they speak. Why not assess words for what they are rather than assess words for _how_ they are?
Furthermore, this even goes against what Lorraine seemingly stands for. She’d read your comment and probably recoil at that; because otherwise why would she write play-after-play where the characters speak in heavy slang/AAV? Why would she support and comfortably talk with/work with other artists who speak in slang like Langston Hughes?
@@Peace8267 The person that commented assessed both the "what" and "how". When you say someone has a brilliant insight, you are speaking about their message over their delivery. Also, I think you would have to have a wealth of knowledge to effectively deliver a message in multiple vernaculars which is what Hansberry did. The commenter was simply pointing out her complete control of what we call standard English. It does not take away from her message at all.
@@JM-sd5dt
I didn't say this person overlooked what Lorraine Hansberry was saying, more so this whole entire rhetoric of "why doesn't anybody speak like this anymore?" is kind of reductive and micro-aggressive, for many reasons.
They straight up said that there is a "correct" way of speaking English, and that, somehow, Lorraine Hansberry's is an example of that "correct speech;" this overshadows many things, such as the 30 _major_ dialects spoken in the US alone, the way in which black American speech has evolved differently from white American speech, and even just the fact that--while to us she's speaking "refined"--there will be many, many other people who will still scrutinize the way she speaks.
You can also be very, very knowledgeable and yet still articulate yourself in a way that people would consider "improper." You can be a profound linguist and speak with heavy slang (i.e.: James Baldwin spoke in slang a lot, but he also knew French as a second language, and didn't learn the language formally). Hell, you can be mute but still be a genius; language is only one aspect of the human mind.
To put it simply: this commenter put Lorraine's speech on a pedestal, a pedestal which is very narrow (on a cultural _and_ linguistic basis), and also one that she herself would probably be very uncomfortable with. She's even implied in this interview how she finds beauty in the way that Irish and Black speech is very derivative from the norm. A part of me has to ask to: of all the things that Lorraine's said in this interview, how much has _really_ stuck with you if this was the only thing you felt the need to comment?
As a black person myself, who also reads and writes a lot, people act "shocked" when they see how "articulate and grammatically correct" I am, and I know exactly what they mean by that. It's something that's made me uncomfortable and invalidated; I'm more than sure that Lorraine Hansberry would feel the same. She's someone who can see right through microaggressions and swiftly combats them as a response, as seen with the interview she had with Mike Wallace.
@@Peace8267 The commenter said American and not black women or black people. I think you added culture in your interpretation because Hansberry is black. I think the commenter was saying her speech is eloquent and any American should aspire to her way of speaking.
NOT ONE CORNY LINE IN THE ENTIRE PLAY!
Would the central character not be the insurance check? Just a thought.
I wonder what she would have thought about the Hip Hop and black music of today
yes, Raisin in the Sun transcends categorization. It's not a "Racial Play."
indubitably universal themes:
"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life." Proverbs 13:22
Harlem by Langston Hughes
"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?
You can hear her smoking.
sounds more like she's sipping coffee or tea to me. Could be doing both.