Saw “A Raisin in the Sun” on Broadway this week. If you are in the New York City area between now and June 15th, by all means go and see it. Even if you have seen the play many times before, this production and cast is well worth seeing. Standout acting in a production that feels as if it could be happening in present day rather than in the post World War II era in which it was set.

Today’s Thoughtful Thursday pays tribute to A Raisin in the Sun and its playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois. She finished A Raisin in the Sun in 1957 and it had its Broadway debut on March 11, 1959, becoming the first play written by an African-American woman to be produced on Broadway. Hansberry won a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for the play in 1959, and was the first Black playwright and the youngest American to do so. Throughout her life she was heavily involved in civil rights. She died at 34 of pancreatic cancer.

Below are several Hansberry quotes, most of them from A Raisin in the Sun. Could not resist ending with the Langston Hughes poem which gave the play its title. Enjoy.

Lorraine Hansberry Quotes

“The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.”

“Never be afraid to sit awhile and think.”

“There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing… Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain’t through learning — because that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ’cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.”

“Seems like God don’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams — but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile.”

“I want to fly! I want to touch the sun!” “Finish your eggs first.”

Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes