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A Raisin In The Sun Analysis

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Inspired by the poem Harlem by Langston Hughes, A Raisin in The Sun is a playwright written by Lorraine Hansberry following the lives of individual members of a black family from the Southside of Chicago. An activist beyond her times, Hughes was a lesbian, activist, and a communist in 1950’s America, during the peak of the Red Scare (biography.com). Her revolutionary ideals are seen within her works, including this play, as every character deals with racism in one form or another, which is further exacerbated by the family’s poverty, as they try and decide what to do with the $10,000 life insurance check. Beneatha, a 20 years old medical student, is introduced within the play as a character with straightened hair; this is a metaphor of her internalized white-supremacy, and unconscious rejection of her natural features, in lieu of chasing after eurocentric beauty standards in an effort to be seen as beautiful and accepted by society. Hair straightening is a much more involved and painful process for textured hair in contrast to what someone with “caucasian” hair may experience when trying to straighten their hair (X, 44). It involves smearing a rancid smelling chemical onto one’s scalp, and tolerating it’s burning feeling until you can’t tolerate it anymore (X, 46). Midway through the play, however, Beneatha meets a student on campus, an African exchange student called Asagi. He comments on her hair, which leads her to a reflection of her actions, and results in her

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