Conversations with Lorraine Hansberry

The legacy of Lorraine Hansberry (1930–65) remains a topic of cultural and intellectual significance nearly six decades after her tragically early death. In her short but formative life and career, Hansberry managed skillfully to bridge the responsibilities and sensibilities of activism and artistry with a fervent commitment to both. Conversations with Lorraine Hansberry provides a comprehensive window into the specific, often hostile, social climate that shaped Hansberry’s political and intellectual beliefs as well as the acumen with which she unwaveringly presented those philosophies on and off the page. This edited collection marks the first volume to “collect all of her substantive interviews in one place,” showcasing the ways in which Hansberry spoke for herself in her lifetime and simultaneously allowing her to participate in the construction of her narrative long after her passing. By focusing on the interviews and conversations that spurred from the unparalleled success of A Raisin in the Sun (1959), the collection paints a unique portrait of Hansberry’s public life and the thoughtful, and oftentimes forceful, ways she navigated it.In her introduction to the book, editor Mollie Godfrey briefly details her intentions in gathering these interviews: an effort to understand and preserve the political, aesthetic, and cultural positioning of one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the twentieth century. Godfrey rehearses Hansberry’s pervasive posthumous presence in American, particularly Black American, literature and culture. Like the book’s title, Godfrey strives to create a type of kinship between the contemporary conversations that scholars and artists continue to stage with Hansberry and her work by documenting and stitching together the fruitful, tense, lighthearted, speculative, and honest conversations that she once had. Godfrey explains, “Representing Hansberry variously as a friend, a foil, and a foremother, these attempts to continue speaking with and through Hansberry remind us that she can no longer speak back. It is my hope that these interviews will open a small window into the eloquence, intensity, and insight with which she once did” (xix). If this collected volume serves as an expansive keepsake of the ways in which Lorraine Hansberry often “spoke back,” it is worth noting that the body of interviews begins with Hansberry doing just that. In a short piece titled “Raisin Author Tells Meaning of Her Play,” published in New York Age in December 1958, Hansberry spoke back to “several press accounts” that had attempted and ultimately failed to explain what A Raisin in the Sun was about (3). Attributing these misrepresentations and misinterpretations to the preconceived notions and assumptions that inevitably accompany any consideration of a “Negro play,” Hansberry proceeded to contest these racialized explanations of her play by providing her own. The choice of beginning the collection with a short piece written by Hansberry herself, absent of the typical interlocutors that populate most of the interviews, stands out as a decision to foreground the incisive yet elegant ways in which Hansberry articulated her beliefs and reflected on her art even early on in her career, before the premiere of the play. This decision also sets the tone for the rest of the interviews, which largely include, to varying degrees, Hansberry’s addressing the particularities and universalities of a “Negro play” and the broader implications, responsibilities, and entanglements of Black art and Black life.Starting with the aforementioned essay from the beginning of Hansberry’s career in 1958, the interviews appear in chronological order and span the length of her career and sadly the rest of her life, ending in 1964. Besides chronology, the only other organizational facet of the book lies in the fact that the first five of the twenty-one interviews consist of brief features about Lorraine Hansberry with quotations and remarks from her interwoven into the articles rather than direct dialogue with her. The unprecedented success of A Raisin in the Sun as the first Broadway-produced play by a Black woman and the almost instantaneous celebrity status it garnered Hansberry emerge as the primary topics of discussion in the early interviews while also remaining a consistent thread in the years that follow. The uniquely racialized and gendered nature of her achievement often threatened to obscure the artistry and craftmanship of her work in these discussions, with interviewers relying on loaded questions and statements about whether A Raisin in the Sun is truly a Negro play. Hansberry consistently presented an unwavering commitment to acknowledging the inextricable link between her identity and her art. At times the similarity of these conversations makes for a tedious reading experience. In some of the shorter interviews, the various interviewers and Hansberry repeat lines and phrases verbatim. Godfrey’s decision to include these varyingly repetitive conversations reads initially like an editorial oversight, but considering them collectively shows not only the steadfast integrity of Hansberry’s public persona and political concerns but also the routine and startlingly casual micro and macro aggressions that these interviewers tirelessly committed. By including the seemingly inconsequential alongside the intensely memorable, Godfrey demonstrates that no matter the contexts or the stakes, Lorraine Hansberry remained passionate and full of the profound insight that made her a person worth hearing.The later interviews wrestle with the increasingly pressing racial tensions of the time and the role of the artist in the larger fight for truth and equality. Joined by a host of other writers and thinkers, readers see Lorraine Hansberry in conversation and sometimes at odds with her primarily male peers such as Peter Glenville, Dore Schary, Jose Quintero, and Alfred Kazin debating the current trends of theater, the place of realism and naturalism on the stage, and the changing standards of artists as they grapple with the demands of spectatorship. Other Black artists and writers, including but not limited to James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka, and Llyod Richards, loom large in the discussions and actual interviews as friends, intellectual antagonists, and comrades in the struggle for Black liberation. The transcripts of these few larger group dialogues and panels take up significant space in the overall book—a David Susskind interview from 1959 with the previously mentioned men, “The Negro in American Culture: Interview with James Baldwin, Emile Capouya, Lorraine Hansberry, Langston Hughes and Alfred Kazin” (1961), and “The Black Revolution and the White Backlash: A Town Hall Forum” (1964) span approximately thirty pages each while relatively short interviews make up the rest of the book. Godfrey’s choice to transcribe and include these interviews in their entirety and maintain as much of the nonverbal utterances and interruptions truly encapsulates the essence of being in conversation with Hansberry as it demonstrates the warmth and frustration, the understanding and confusion that often accompanies any conversation among peers discussing their passions and anxieties. It contextualizes Hansberry’s political and aesthetic concerns among the consciousness and sensibilities of her epoch and illuminates the ways her voice always managed to make itself heard even in spaces where she was often the minority, physically and intellectually.Along with these longer, multi-person exchanges, a handful of additional entries stand out—some for their contentious and troubling nature and others for the sheer craft, humor, and political perspicacity that Hansberry consistently displayed in her writing and her life. One such interview of the blatantly hostile and borderline unprofessional variety that leaves a forceful imprint emerges in her previously unaired interview with Mike Wallace from 1959. From Wallace’s opening introduction of Lorraine Hansberry in which he repeatedly remarked in astonishment on the success of a play by “an unknown, unpublished,” “twenty-eight, or is it twenty-nine-year-old girl,” he established the mood for the rest of an awkward and racially antagonistic interview predicated on his disbelief in the capabilities of Black artists (63). Although the other interviews show that Wallace was not alone in his negative assumptions, this half-hour exchange presents the most consistent disconnect between the intentions and concerns of Black artists and the inimical indifference of white consumers. Among the many unanswerable questions Wallace posed, some more than others seemingly struck Hansberry with tangible frustration and bafflement. Early in the interview, he asked her, “Is it fair to say that even in proportion very few Negroes have distinguished themselves as playwrights, novelist, and poets? There have been a few, including yourself, but not many. How come?” (64). Hansberry explained the difficulty of discerning conventional “distinguishment” in anything that Negroes do in America because the circumstances are always hostile (64). He went on to ask increasingly antagonistic questions about why a white audience would be interested in seeing a “Negro play,” whether Hansberry herself had ever been slapped like the daughter in her play, and if she condoned the supposed violence and danger of the Black Nationalist Movement at the time. Hansberry gracefully navigated the interview, never allowing her words or beliefs to be misconstrued or manipulated in the back and forth with Wallace. She ended the interview with a clear explanation of her views and a timely reminder of why her art and her activism remain pertinent to social concerns of the twenty-first century. She explained, “My position is that we have a great deal to be angry about, furious about, you know. It’s 1959 and they are still lynching Negroes in America, and I feel, as our African friends do, that we need all ideologies which point toward the total liberation of the African peoples all over the world” (72).Among these confrontational interviews and discussions, Godfrey includes another short written piece by Hansberry titled “Images and Essences: 1961 Dialogue with an Uncolored Egghead Containing Wholesome Intentions and Some Sass,” which was published in The Urbanite in 1961. The inclusion of this highly satirical simulation of the types of contentious conversations that take place with white interviewers and peers initially appears like an unnecessary choice considering the very real and similar conversations that surround it; however, this creative contribution from Hansberry herself not only offers insight into her personality and humor in a way that the typical interview format fails but also provides readers a chance to engage with her imaginative work in the context of this larger archival collection. Godfrey’s decision to incorporate this artistic rendering of these colloquies recenters Hansberry as the focal point of these often-digressing conversations and shows her own subjective response and interpretation of these exchanges. The piece ends with a fantastical image of Black art and its creators in ecstasy and communion as their work illuminates the often dark and treacherous space of critical engagement. As Hansberry envisioned,The collection ends with a conversation between historian and Ebony editor Lerone Bennett, Jr., and artist Margaret G. Burroughs in a piece titled “A Lorraine Hansberry Rap,” which appeared in Freedomways in 1979. Nearly fourteen years after her death, the two discussed the life and work of Lorraine Hansberry and her roots in and impact on the Black cultural scene in Chicago. The choice to end the entire collection with a discussion between two individuals who did not personally know Hansberry over a decade after her passing initially appears curiously misplaced. Reading Bennett and Burroughs discuss the lasting power of A Raisin in the Sun and speculate about the possible gems that Hansberry’s premature death curtailed, it becomes apparent that Hansberry mattered and will continue to matter to anyone who cares about Black culture, literature, and liberation. This concise and compelling archival contribution reminds dedicated scholars and casual admirers alike of the unfortunate dearth of material Hansberry left behind in her short life and how invaluable a collection of her public engagement and writings truly is.