A Raisin in the Sun

When it was first produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life. A play that changed American theater forever.--The New York Times. nNever before, the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of black people's lives been seen on the stage, observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. nIndeed Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America--and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem Harlem, which warns that a dream deferred might dry up/like a raisin in the sun. n nThe events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun, said The New York Times. It is as if history is conspiring to make the play a classic. This Modern Library edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry's landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff.n