Race and politics in the twentieth-century Black American play: Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun

Abstract

The article is written in the light of critical whiteness studies and the critical discourse regarding the political implications of literary works. It deals with Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun, which I position within the context of black American radical theatre. In particular, the article will show how Hansberry’s theatrical rhetoric challenges the public dynamics of racial separation and performs an ongoing role in destabilising the assumptions about the legitimacy of the reproduction of colonial differences.