"For Lorraine Hansberry, 'A Raisin in the Sun' Was Just the Start"

Salamishah Tillet's essay, "For Lorraine Hansberry, 'A Raisin in the Sun Was Just the Start," discusses the upcoming debut of the documentary, Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, noting Hansberry's commitment to the ongoing project of social change.

"Hansberry experimented with a variety of forms, which includes the essay, long-form fiction, and short stories as well being a visual artist and a painter," said Imani Perry, author of the forthcoming Looking for Lorraine: A Life of Lorraine Hansberry and a professor of African-American studies at Princeton. "And she was also fairly ecumenical in terms of her political activism." Hansberry was concerned with racial justice, colonialism and feminism; she joined the Communist Party and led the Young Progressives group at the University of Wisconsin in 1948. 

“For Hansberry, however, art was not simply an expression of her civil rights concerns but also a space where she could wage racial and gender battles and find resolutions that were more liberating than the law.”