by bell hooks
hansberry
the deep one
Even though I knew as a girl that I wanted to be a writer, it took years for me to discover a black woman writer whose life and work inspired me and affirmed my aspirations. Even though I discovered black women writers in my teens, I knew nothing of their lives and work habits. I entered college with a drama scholarship, seeing myself as destined to be both actress and writer. During my first year of study I went to see a performance of Lorraine Hansberry’s To Be Young, Gifted and Black. I was already familiar with her play A Raisin in the Sun from my high school drama classes. Although I enjoyed this earlier play, seeing myself mirrored in the character of Beneatha, it seemed then like very conventional drama. I did not come away from the play wondering about the life of the playwright—who she was, where she was coming from, why she chose to write plays.
Having recently left the world of the segregated South to come all the way to Stanford University and study drama, I felt utterly alienated from the world around me. Everything was new and strange. When I saw To Be Young, Gifted and Black, a play bearing witness to the reality of Hansberry’s life and work, I felt that I was no longer alone. She had experienced intense alienation when she went away to college. She did not fit. Her struggles with sexuality and love were problematic. Hansberry was fascinated by global politics, women’s liberation, black power. She was “in the mix.” After seeing the performance I began to read everything I could find about her life and work. Awed by the intimate portrayal of Hansberry “the artist” in To Be Young, Gifted and Black, I returned to my dormitory room that night ecstatic because I had found a new literary mentor.
At the time, Hansberry’s dying young made her seem all the more romantic. She represented the “new woman”—the woman I wanted to become. Experimental, free, determined to live life on her own terms. I wept over scenes from her play The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. Her dramatic portrait Toussaint taught me to consider the fate of black resistance historically in relation to our individual and collective will to sacrifice for freedom. Les Blancs led me to think about Africa, imperialism, and colonialism. Hansberry was the only young black woman artist I had found who was a critical thinker interested in feminism and in the global politics of race and nation. In an article written in 1963, “On Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, and ‘Guilt,’” Hansberry reveals the scope of her political thinking and her metaphysical beliefs. Her comments are worth quoting at length:
Things are very, very complicated.… But they aren’t that complicated either. The English [colonialists] are wrong, the Kikuyu [rebelling subjects] are right; we are wrong. Castro is right; the Vietnamese people (there doesn’t appear to be any difference between the Vietnamese people and the ‘Viet Cong’ any more by our own account) are right and we are wrong; the Negro people are right and the shameful dawdling of Federal authority [in securing their civil rights] is wrong, the concept of ‘woman’ which fashioned, warped and destroyed a human being such as Marilyn Monroe (or ‘Audrey Smith’ or ‘Jean West’ or ‘Lucy Jones’—daily) IS HIDEOUSLY WRONG—and she, in her repudiation of it, in trying tragically to RISE ABOVE it by killing herself is (in the Shakespearean sense)—right.
A woman of courage and daring, Hansberry had no trouble taking a stand for what she believed was right action.
Hansberry’s work entered my life just as I was grappling with the difficult question of whether or not I could be both writer and intellectual; when I was trying to figure out if I could be a part of feminist movement and still play a part in the struggle for black liberation. Through her work, she became a guiding light. A woman of paradox, from Hansberry I learned to accept multiple locations as points of identification. She loved and celebrated the specific culture of black America, embracing the African diaspora even as she also loved the best writing from European authors. Who could not be enchanted by a writer responding to a letter from a white midwestern farm boy by writing: “I suppose I think that the highest gift that man has is art, and I am audacious enough to think of myself as an artist, that there is both joy and beauty and illumination and communion between people to be achieved through the dissection of personality. That’s what I want to do. I want to reach a little closer to the world, which is to say people, and see if we can share some illuminations together about each other.” I identified more with Hansberry than with other black women writers because she had both a distinct commitment to an artistic vision realized with literary excellence as well as an ongoing commitment to social and political activism. Hansberry remains a radical visionary, an artist whose intellectual work has not received the attention and level of recognition that would have been hers long ago had she been born a man.
When I enter classrooms to teach American literature, especially writing by black women, I want students to leave knowing the work of Lorraine Hansberry. Many students have never heard her name. Among those who have, few have seen a staged production of any of her plays, or the film versions of A Raisin in the Sun. Even though American Playhouse presented this play to millions of television viewers, audiences are prone to quickly forget the contributions of black women writers. Those of us who will never forget were thrilled that she received this tribute to her work. She remains for us a guiding force. While she was a gifted playwright, that was not the sole measure of her brilliance. She was both artist and intellectual, a critical thinker concerned with the pressing social issues of her time. Her essays and creative writing reveal to contemporary readers that she was a radical visionary, her work prophetic.
Unlike many contemporary writers, including black authors, Hansberry never ignored political issues. Her compelling and forceful 1959 essay “The Negro Writer and His Roots: Towards a New Romanticism” was delivered at a conference about black writers convened by the American Society of African Culture. At this conference she urged black artists and intellectuals to recognize the vital connection between politics and aesthetics. Calling for direct engagement, Hansberry dared black writers to seize power and address a wide range of cultural and political concerns: “The foremost enemy of the Negro intelligentsia of the past has been and in a large sense remains—isolation. No more than can the Negro people afford to imagine themselves removed from the most pressing world issues of our time—war and peace, colonialism, capitalism vs. socialism—than can I believe that the Negro writer imagines that he will be exempt from artistic examination of questions which plague the intellect and spirit of man.” This essay remains one of the most significant discussions of the relationship between art and politics. In this piece Hansberry reminds everyone “that all art is ultimately social.”
For many years A Raisin in the Sun was my least favorite of Hansberry’s plays because it seemed on the surface to be conservative. Yet the American Playhouse production included parts of the play that had been taken out years ago. The parts that were removed were those that graphically portrayed radical politics. Retrospectively, audiences can accept Hansberry’s concern with the global politics of U.S. imperialism, colonialism, and the question of African independence. Today, her interest in feminist questions seems utterly normal. Yet these were the issues that had to be toned down for a fifties audience. Ironically, then, many audiences saw the play as affirming the notion that black women are matriarchal heads of black households. Yet Hansberry’s play was celebrating just the opposite. There is ongoing insistence in the play that Lena Younger assumes her position as head of the household only because her husband Big Walter is dead. Constant dramatic evocation of his presence emphasizes that the values and beliefs they shared as a couple inform the decision she makes after his death.
Most critics failed to call attention to this subplot—the love story of Big Walter and Lena. Yet the fictional portrait of Big Walter directly challenges racist and sexist assumptions about black masculinity, about the role of black men as workers. Significantly, Lena constantly praises Big Walter’s work ethic, even suggesting that he died young because he worked too hard. In the tele
vision production Esther Rolle’s interpretation of Lena’s character is truly magnificent. No longer portrayed stereotypically as a fierce black matriarch, she is reserved and resolute. Yet we also see her vulnerability, the way the various crises she confronts affect her emotionally. We see how she critically reflects on her actions and changes them. It is a powerful dramatic moment when she confesses to Walter Lee (her son) her complicity in denying him the opportunity to act as a responsible adult person. An engaging aspect of this production is the extent to which individual characters are portrayed in a completely multidimensional manner, not as flat stereotypes.
Certainly the character of Beneatha (played by Kim Yancey) was a radical portrayal of an emerging feminist. This production was the first one that did not downplay her role, subordinating it to Mrs. Younger and Walter Lee. One of the most moving moments in the play occurs when Beneatha explains to her sister-in-law Ruth and her mother the need for women to express themselves. Their sweet contemptuous laughter highlights the gulf separating these generations of black women. Beneatha’s struggle to find an adequate language to articulate her emergent revolutionary black female identity prophetically shows the struggle to be self-defining facing black youth today. Much contemporary feminist scholarship explores the relationship between mothers and daughters both in fiction and everyday life. The characterization of the mother/ daughter bond in A Raisin in the Sun is an unusual fictive portrayal of affirmation between black women. In much of the work by black women writers mothers fail to prepare their daughters to live a different and/or better life. They neglect and abandon them, never giving sustained emotional care.
Even though Lena Younger is old-fashioned, by no means a “new woman,” she wholeheartedly nurtures and supports Beneatha in all her endeavors—the silly and the serious. Their relationship is deeply loving and full of contradictions. Beneatha respects her mother’s power yet feels she is tyrannical sometimes. A dramatic confrontation between mother and daughter occurs when Beneatha expresses her anger and rejection of her brother Walter Lee. This is the moment in the play when Lena Younger offers her metaphysical understanding of the meaning of compassion: “You—you mourning your brother? You feeling like you better than he is today? What you tell him a minute ago? That he wasn’t a man? Yes? You give him up for me? You done wrote his epitaph too—like the rest of the world? Well, who give you the privilege? Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most: when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain’t through learning—because that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ‘cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.…” Passages like this one reveal Hansberry’s gift with language and her desire to portray the profundity and wisdom that Lena has gleaned from her experience, which is symbolic of collective black experience. Her plays allowed audiences to hear the poetic lyrical nuances of black vernacular.
Hansberry wanted audiences to reconsider the standards used to judge and dismiss working-class folks, particularly the black working class. In a radio interview with Studs Terkel she identified her middle-class roots while expressing solidarity with the black masses: “I guess at this moment the Negro middle class—the comfortable middle class—may be from five to six percent of our people, and they are atypical of the representative experience of Negroes in this country. Therefore, I have to believe that whatever we ultimately achieve, however we ultimately transform our lives, the changes will come from the kind of people I chose to portray. They are more pertinent, move relevant, more significant—most important, more decisive—in our political history and our political future.” She was equally fascinated by the lives of white people across class. Her black identity did not mean that she could not make white characters center stage. Despite her focus on whiteness, she was most fascinated by the way in which black people, her people, had survived racist exploitation and oppression.
Hansberry was impressed by the dignity and beauty of black life, urging young black writers to “write about our people: tell their story.” A Raisin in the Sun is a uniquely American drama. It paved the way for future black playwrights, like August Wilson, providing them a platform to demand that theater audiences recognize the heroic elements of black experience. The issues raised in A Raisin in the Sun are as relevant today as they were when the play was first performed. Its contemporary relevance is indicative of the prophetic nature of Hansberry’s experience. In his introduction to To Be Young, Gifted and Black James Baldwin recalled the moment when black viewers came backstage to see Lorraine Hansberry after the initial production of her first successful play. He declared her to be more than an artist; she was a “witness.” He also shared that to bear witness was difficult and risky. Despite the critical acclaim Hansberry received for her work, she was also criticized. According to Baldwin’s account, white and black folks criticized her “very harshly, very loudly.” While they were never able to silence her words, they did cause her great distress. At times she felt extremely isolated and alone even though she continued to write and be politically active.
As a dissident voice, Lorraine Hansberry stands alone. Few black women writers have been as radical as she was. In keeping with her daring manner she wrote a letter to the New York Times defending black radicalism, which they refused to publish. She addressed a forum on “The Black Revolution and the White Backlash.” Speaking with fellow writers about the issues of solidarity between whites and blacks she stated: “The problem is we have to find some way, with these dialogues, to encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal—and become an American radical.” Hansberry insisted: “I don’t think we can decide ultimately on the basis of color. The passion that we express should be understood, I think, in that context. We want total identification. It’s not a question of reading anybody out; it’s a merger … but it has to be on the basis of true and genuine equality. And if we think that isn’t going to be painful, we’re mistaken.…” One of the first black writers to publish in openly gay magazines, Hansberry linked feminism and gay rights long before it was popular to do so. Yet in typical eclectic fashion she also critiqued the sexism of gay males. In an unpublished letter to a gay magazine she wrote: “The relationship of anti-homosexual sentiment to the oppression of women has a special and deep implication. That is to say that the reason for the double standard of social valuation is rooted in the societal contempt for the estate of womanhood in the first place.”
Hansberry’s activism gave necessary support to her artistic assertions about the future of humankind—her optimism. With visionary foresight she saw that black and white people alike would lose hope. She saw that nihilism and despair could destroy black liberation struggle in the diaspora. All her writing is deeply optimistic. Her work is hopeful, yet that hope is never based on false sentimentality. It is always rooted in activism. She saw change and knew it was possible to envision and make a better society. Hansberry transgressed boundaries at a time when it was not acceptable to cross borders. Looking at the world from a standpoint that recognized the interconnectedness of race, sex, and class, she challenged everyone who encountered her work. While Hansberry’s vision is clear in To Be Young, Gifted and Black, hopefully there will come a day when her essays, interviews, and speeches will be published more widely and therefore become more well known.
A few weeks ago a talented, brilliant young black woman student came to see me and complained about isolation, about the absence of radical intellectual comrades. She wanted to know what I did during times of depression when I feel dispirited and alone. I told her I often turn to the work of Lorraine Hansberry to renew my spirit, to remind me that I am not alone. Hansberry died at the tender age of thirty-four. Before her death she wrote with intensity and devotion. She wrote about her passion for life. That passion remains visib
le in the work. It is restorative. Hansberry will always be a guiding light. As an intellectual and a writer I walk a path that she first cleared. Few writers give that much.
writing with grace
the magic of morrison
“When I think of autumn I think of hands that do not want me to die.” This is what the impoverished little black girl Claudia thinks in The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison’s first novel, when she is sick with cold. Feeling all alone and uncared for until her mother appears and rubs soothing salve into her chest to make her better, Claudia knows these hands are full of healing power, full of longing for her to be made well. I love this sentence because it does so much with so little. Morrison’s writing is like that. She is able to take the simplest combination of words and put them together in a way that astounds, that awes as readers confront a depth and complexity beyond anything they can express in language. The sheer lyrical beauty of her language seduces and enchants us, even if we do not feel in agreement with the vision of the world she fictively evokes. We come away from her writing with images and passages in our heads that we listen to over and over again, the way song lyrics linger in our memory through time, songs that are unforgettable.
To be a contemporary writer whose work has such power is already to inhabit the space of the elect, the chosen. Overwhelming reader response reminds the world that this writing has sustained literary power. It is in keeping with that power that the world pays homage, that Toni Morrison’s work can receive a Nobel Prize. Her work has always been special—set apart. Publishing her first book much later in her career than young writers today, Morrison entered the literary scene at a time when contemporary feminist movement was calling attention to works by women writers and suddenly paying attention to writing by black women. As literary women worked to uncover the buried histories of writing about women they noticed first the way black women writers were almost ignored, their presence all but erased from the literary cultural landscape.
