Cornell West and Tricia Rose discuss Lorraine Hansberry and Gwendolyn Brooks and the radical Black literary tradition

On the 62nd anniversary of the Broadway premiere of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” Cornell West and Tricia Rose reflect on the Black literary tradition as they focus on the legacies of Lorraine Hansberry and Gwendolyn Brooks as revolutionaries and exemplars who are often misunderstood as the “darlings of the white liberal establishment.”

Part of the weekly program, The Tight Rope, in this weeks episode "Lorraine Hansberry and Gwendolyn Brooks: Darlings of the White Establishment?," the show’s creator Jeremy James Berry notes that:

“The professors discuss the tension between the relation of love and freedom (interpersonal justice) on the one hand and the struggle for political and economic justice on the other, while expertly explaining why and how some of the authors’ most popular works are still misinterpreted in the modern world as less revolutionary than they reveal themselves to be beneath the surface.”

The video can be found here.