Lorraine Hansberry

To Be Young, Gifted and Black

Essay-play about dreams, identity, and the African American experience

About the author

Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine Hansberry

The first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway, Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun, which became a landmark of American theater and civil rights culture. She died of cancer at 34, leaving behind a body of work that transformed what American drama could say about race and identity. Her journals and unfinished works reveal a major intellect cut short.

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