A Dream Deferred

The history of African Americans was marked by deep injustices (starting with slavery, which was abolished in 1865; followed by legal segregation, in practice until 1965; and its various manifestations which attempted against the social and civil rights, and even the identity of a whole people.



Against such a negative background, artists among other members of the African American community played an important role in defining identity in positive termns, fighting for recognition of equal rights, and contributiing to the richness, diversity and multi-voiced character of American multicultural art.

Lorraine Hansberry, a playwright commited to the African American cause, wrote her paly A Raisin in the Sun which was produced in 1959 for the first time. The play takes its title from a poem by Langston Hughes. He was one of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Below you can read Hughes' text:



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?



This poem plays with the idea of the dream (the American dream, which has been part of American life, history, ideology and society from the very beginning); only that his series of rhetorical questions turn the "dream" inside-out: what happens when people cannot reach their dream? when it is postponed?



Lorraine Hansberry's play is an attempt to answer the question. The dream may take different forms in each character's case, but they're all unified by the desire of equality.

As you read the play, take into consideration the following ideas:

* The dream(s)

* Asagai's role in helping define dreams and identity

* Realism vs. idealism

* Vanished dreams

* Death (real ans symbolic)

* Role of men. Manhood

And think deeply about the following questions:

* Is Lena a nurturing or an overbearing mother?

* How does the nature of the family account for the dreams they have?

* Which economic, social and moral pressures do the characters feel?