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:
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On March 22, 2018, the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will co-present Lorraine Hansberry: Reimagining Biography. The four panelists will share how they navigated the feminisms, intersectionalities, political, and private-public voicings that shaped Hansberry’s life in their biographical treatments of the artist, activist, and public intellectual.
Over the next two weeks we will be sharing information about the panel participants as well as information about the Lorraine Hansberry Papers, held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Today we are highlighting 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.
On March 27, 2017, Georgetown University Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics presented Dreams Deferred: Crossing Continents and Cultures with ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ in celebration of World Theatre Day. The one-night event, moderated by Soyica Colbert, was in advance of the Arena Stage Mead Center for the American Theatre’s 2017 production of A Raisin in the Sun in Wahington, DC and productions in Sweden at the Riksteatern, directed by Josette Bushell-Mingo, OBE, and at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, directed by James Ngcobo.
On Thursday, March 22, 2018, the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will co-present Lorraine Hansberry: Reimagining Biography. In addition to the AMERICAN MASTERS documentary, Sighted Eyes|Feeling Heart, three biographical treatments of the artist, activist, and public intellectual will be published in the next several years. The four panelists will share how they navigated the feminisms, intersectionalities, political, and private-public voicings that shaped Hansberry’s life in their biographical treatments of the artist, activist, and public intellectual.
Over the last two weeks we have been sharing information about the panel participants as well as information about the Lorraine Hansberry Papers, held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
On March 22, 2018, the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will co-present Lorraine Hansberry: Reimagining Biography. In addition to the AMERICAN MASTERS documentary, Sighted Eyes|Feeling Heart, that aired on PBS in January 2018, three biographical treatments of the artist, activist, and public intellectual will be published in the next several years. Reimagining Biography panelists will be asked to address the feminisms, intersectionalities, political, and private-public voicings that shaped Hansberry’s life and her understanding of herself and the worlds she both lived in and created.
In 2010 the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture published an article, “Young, Gifted, Black, and Complicated: The Question of Lorraine Hansberry’s Legacy,” in their newsletter, Africana Heritage. In that article, Steven G. Fullwood, then Assistant Curator, Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture puts the incredible legacy of Lorraine Hansberry’s contribution as an artist, activist, public intellectual, and writer into context.
Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry (Beacon Press, 2018) continues to win awards: on Monday, June 3, author Dr. Imani Perry received the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction.
Stevie Wilson, a Black, queer, writer, activist, and student incarcerated in Pennsylvania, is the coordinator of, and participant in, a network of self-organized prisoner abolitionist study groups at SCI-Smithfield. On the website of the four study crews, Dreaming Freedom | Practicing Abolition, Stevie recalls a scene from Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun in his essay, “Doing Abolition.”
The Lorraine Hansberry Documentary Project, LLC in co-production with Independent Television Service and Black Public Media won a Peabody Award for the American Masters documentary, Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, which premiered on January 19, 2018.
Last night Tracy Strain was awarded an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture (Television), adding to the recognition of the documentary, Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart that aired on PBS in January 2018.
Narrated by Billy Porter, the HBO Max four-part docu series EQUAL honors LGBTQIA artists, activists, thinkers, and organizers who “spoke out when it mattered most, who built community through secret societies, and who fought against all odds in pursuit of that most underlining human quality: the desire to be yourself.”