Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry

by Imani Perry

why did I believe this book, less a biography than a genre yet to be named—maybe third person memoir—had to be written? The obvious answer is Lorraine Hansberry was the first Black woman to have her play produced on Broadway and the first Black winner of the prestigious Drama Critics’ Circle Award. That first play, A Raisin in the Sun, is the most widely produced and read play by a Black American woman.

When one of his coworkers suggests getting police protection, he scoffs, “Police don’t mean nothing. They white ain’t they?”7

Lorraine’s impressionistic renderings of the violence of the “good uncolored,” an ironic turn of phrase if ever there was one, tells the reader that the “coloreds” were the human ones, the normal and decent ones. But the “uncolored” were a haunting other, devoid of morality or decency.

Lorraine created a collective Black consciousness; together the kids resisted white attacks and police violence. She chose to create something different from what she often saw: a weak and compliant Black middle class whose elitism created a persistent tension with the rest of the Black community, notwithstanding that all of Black Chicago lived behind the veil together.

Lorraine defied stereotypes that her peers likely held of Black girls from Chicago’s South Side. She was bourgeois and erudite. Her physical beauty—a lithe body, conventional prettiness, and a creamy and not too rich, brown skin—likely helped ease any potential worry.

they spent much of the summer discussing social realism, which was undoubtedly more up Lorraine’s alley than conjugating verbs or campus dances. But Chicago in the summer was only a temporary landing before her next embarkation. And this one was major. She moved to New York City.

She was depressed but also hopeful. That was quintessentially Lorraine.

I work for the new Negro paper: FREEDOM, which in its time in history, ought to be the journal of Negro liberation . . . in fact it will be.”9 Freedom was the brainchild of the leftist actor and singer Paul Robeson. Robeson was its publisher, and the editor of the weekly paper was Louis Burnham,

Freedom provided its readers with incisive articles about global anticolonialist struggles and domestic activism against Jim Crow. It shared a clear feminist message with stories about women’s activism and images of women to represent activist movements. The paper also included television, film, and book reviews; children’s stories about Black history; for adults, fiction with political messages; and Robeson editorials. The

“Somehow you have got to know more than what you experience individually”—a commitment to thinking beyond one’s own experience.

profligacy

But her weakness on both matters and more, by her own judgment, was a lack of discipline. Lorraine was restless, seeking, searching, and interested in dozens of things. She was always doing, never lazy or indulgent, but not disciplined. At least not yet.

In contrast to her irritation with people, nature almost seems medicinal in her account: a balm that doesn’t remove her suffering but gives her some refuge. It is somewhat ironic, however, that at this place called Camp Unity that it wasn’t other people but rather inanimate living things that eased her suffering, at least a little bit.

She was raised with the precept that one must never betray the race or the family. And yet, in her persistent habit of observation and dissection, she was finding things about the family worthy of examination and criticism of the sort that would of course provide useful literary fodder. She just had to work up the gumption to use it.

In Trouble in Mind, Childress’s indictment of racism, and specifically racism in the theater world, was both timely and well received. And yet, when she was offered the opportunity to have the play produced on Broadway, Childress declined. The changes the producers sought would have muted criticism of white figures in the theater industry. Her refusal to change the message of Trouble in Mind left the door open for Lorraine to become the first Black woman playwright to have her work produced on Broadway.

It was a strange intersection of race, politics, entertainment, and consumption. But in the middle of all that, Lorraine finally had time and resources to simply write. She searched for stories to tell, tried and failed, and read, and tried.

The resonances between these two women, who rejected conventional expectations and found themselves desperately alone at times as a result, were profound. De Beauvoir gave Lorraine space to articulate a feminism that did not separate out sexuality and sexual desire for other women and also the inspiration to build a feminism that did not exclude race but treated it as a necessary part of understanding race, and race as necessary for understanding gender.

Though her romantic relationships remain, for me, somewhat opaque, it is unquestionable that her desire for women and her love of women was meaningful as part of her politics, her intellectual life, and

her aesthetics, as well as her spirit. I could not possibly write a portrait of her as an artist without it.

As with almost all the members, Lorraine’s belonging to the Daughters of Bilitis was quiet. It was dangerous to be out.