A New Biography of a Brilliant Playwright Who Died Too Young

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins reviews Imani Perry’s recent book, noting that, “…Looking for Lorraine is something between a fan’s notes and an academic monograph, less an unpacking of the archive to reveal the life than an exercise in putting the archive in historical context. Its strongest chapters — on “A Raisin in the Sun” and Lorraine’s coming into her own as a public intellectual — are masterly syntheses of research and analysis. It’s a joy for devotees to encounter some record of Hansberry’s influences, including the Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks, the Irish playwright Sean O’Casey and the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir.”