Reimagining Biography: Meet panelist Imani Perry

Dr. Imani Perry discusses Lorraine Hansberry in Salamishah Tillet's New York Times essay, "For Lorraine Hansberry, 'A Raisin in the Sun Was Just the Start,” 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: The Radiant and Radical 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.”

Lorraine Hansberry: Reimagining Biography

Thursday, March 22, 2018
Panel Discussion 6:30-8:00pm
Reception 8:00-9:00pm

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X Blvd (135th St and Malcolm X Blvd)
New York, NY, 10037

This is a free event, but as space is limited please RSVP here.

Lorraine Hansberry: Reimagining Biography panelists include Imani Perry (author of Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, forthcoming from Beacon Press in September 2018) and a professor of African American Studies at Princeton University); Tracy Heather Strain, (director of Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes | Feeling Heart, PBS national broadcast January 2018); Margaret Wilkerson (author of forthcoming Lorraine Hansberry: Am I a Revolutionary? and Professor Emerita of African Diaspora Studies and Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley); and Soyica Colbert (author of the forthcoming Lorraine Hansberry: Artist/Activist (Yale University Press, 2019) and professor of African American Studies and Theater & Performance Studies at Georgetown University. The panel will be introduced by Joi Gresham, executive director of the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust, and moderated by Joy-Ann Reid (national correspondent, MSNBC).