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The play opened on Broadway in 1959 was a success. Despite the mixed reviews it had received before the opening, the primarily white audiences enjoyed it. A Raisin in the Sun was the first play by a black female author performed on Broadway and also the first one there directed by a black director. These facts and the plot of the play itself encouraged many black people to attend the performance. Thus, the play did not only give some insight into black life to white audiences; it promoted Broadway to millions of black people. Therefore, the play influenced the development of American theatre and society in general.
The plot of the play centers around a poor black family living on Chicagos south side. Walter, a young limousine driver, wants to invest his mothers money in a liquor store. However, his mother decides to spend some of the money on the house in a white neighborhood. Nevertheless, she gives the money to her son and asks him to put $3,000 aside for his sisters education. Walters sister, Beneatha, is considered an intellectual in the family, as she is the only one with the real opportunity to get higher education. That is why she is completely frustrated when Walter loses all the money given to him.
Joseph Asagai, a college student from Nigeria, teaches Beneatha about the drawbacks of being assimilated into the mainstream American culture with its emphasis on material wellbeing. Everyone in the Younger family likes Joseph, as he is a well-educated person. What is more important, he does not act like another friend of Beneatha, George Murchison, who represents a snobbish affluent, fully assimilated black man who denies his African heritage. Joseph Asagai, on the contrary, is proud of his background.
Numerous references to Africa, its cultures, and ancient African civilizations might have been extremely unusual for the predominantly white theatre-goers of that time. For instance, the bright and authentic African folk dance of Beneatha and Walters eagerness to take part in her performance might have shocked the audience in 1959 (Hansberry Act II, Scene One). The way the white neighborhood is shown in the play and some of the details of black life, as well as almost exclusively black cast, undoubtedly impressed a general audience amidst rapid decolonization and, at the same time, racial segregation in the US.
Work Cited
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Edited by Robert Nemiroff, Vintage Books, 1994.
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