OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile
LisaGay Hamilton narrates the biography of the extraordinary black playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote the acclaimed play A RAISIN IN THE SUN. Hansberry accomplished much in her short 34 years on earth, and the steady cadence of Hamilton’s voice creates a mellow, informative, and poised narration of her story. Hamilton is not only informing the listener but also teaching and, most of all, sharing the uncommon details that shaped this energetic woman. Hansberry was passionate, active, and charismatic, especially when it came to the African-American community. Hamilton’s calm tone is unchanging, even while describing Hansberry’s colorful close relationships with artists James Baldwin and Nina Simone. This audiobook is like watching a documentary of someone paving the way for future artist-activists. T.E.C. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
The New York Times Book Review - Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
…Looking for Lorraine is something between a fan's notes and an academic monograph, less an unpacking of the archive to reveal the life than an exercise in putting the archive in historical context. Its strongest chapters—on A Raisin in the Sun and Lorraine's coming into her own as a public intellectual—are masterly syntheses of research and analysis. It's a joy for devotees to encounter some record of Hansberry's influences, including the Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks, the Irish playwright Sean O'Casey and the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir.
Publishers Weekly
★ 10/01/2018
Perry (May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem) explores the art and life of playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote A Raisin in the Sun, about the struggles of an African-American family in mid-century inner-city Chicago, and died at the age of 34 in 1965. “She was one of those great artists whose life rode the wave of some of the most pivotal and complex moments in American history,” Perry writes. “World War II, McCarthyism, civil rights. Lorraine was right in the thick of it, trying to make sense of it all.” Perry also details Hansberry’s activities as a socialist; writes with curiosity and empathy about her complex personal life, including her marriage to a white man, Robert Nemiroff, and her romances with women; and examines the influences upon her of her college-educated parents and mentors, friends such as James Baldwin and Nina Simone, and fellow writers such as Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Insightful literary analyses of Hansberry’s writings fit alongside annotations of excerpts from her diaries and admiring and affectionate declarations about her. This book, “less a biography than a genre yet to be named—maybe third-person memoir?”, is an unusual and exceptional encomium to a brilliant writer and thinker. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
Perry approaches her subject with both empathy and a sharp, critical eye; this is a biography that exercises several muscles at once. Perry’s sentences are intimate, warm, and crisp; in considerning Hansberry in all of her prismatic multiplicities, Perry has written a singular book.”
—Nell Irvin Painter, Sam Stephenson, and Rachel Syme, judges for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award
“Perry seeks to deepen our appreciation in this richly dimensional portrait of a brightly blazing artist, thinker, and activist . . . . Perry does not dwell on the minutiae of traditional biographical coverage of what, when, and where, focusing, instead, on who and why, on inner drama rather than exterior events. Mining writings private and published, collecting memories, tracking the reverberations of Hansberry’s personality, words, and actions, and, at times, entering the narrative, Perry illuminates with arresting impact Hansberry’s thoughts, feelings, and revolutionary social consciousness . . . . Perry’s ardent, expert, and redefining work of biographical discovery brings light, warmth, scope, and enlightening complexity to the spine-straightening story of a brilliant, courageous, seminal, and essential American writer.”
—Booklist, Starred Review
“An intimate portrait of the artist as a black woman at the crossroads . . . Perry infuses the narrative with a sense of urgency and enthusiasm because she believes Hansberry has something to teach us in these ‘complicated times.’ Impressively, she tells her subject’s story in a tightly packed 200 pages. Perry also smartly delves into the inspirations for Hansberry’s brilliant A Raisin in the Sun and engagingly explores Hansberry’s profound friendships with James Baldwin and Nina Simone . . . Throughout this animated and inspiring biography, Perry reminds us that the ‘battles Lorraine fought are still before us: exploitation of the poor, racism, neocolonialism, homophobia, and patriarchy.’”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“A must-read for fans of black and queer history, literary, biography, and women’s history.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review
“Its strongest chapters — on A Raisin in the Sun and Lorraine’s coming into her own as a public intellectual — are masterly syntheses of research and analysis. It’s a joy for devotees to encounter some record of Hansberry’s influences, including the Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks, the Irish playwright Sean O’Casey and the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. . . . Perry makes a welcome case for a fresh assessment of Hansberry’s nondramatic works: her short stories, many published pseudonymously in lesbian magazines, and her many letters and op-eds on politics and literature for The Village Voice and The New York Times.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“A work of scholarship and love . . . . Perry takes us into [Hansberry’s] interior life with a deft hand and a richness of language that makes every page of this book a pleasure to read . . . . [A] wonderful biography of the radical Lorraine Hansberry.”
—The Progressive
“Looking for Lorraine is phenomenal. I didn’t know how hungry I was for this intimate portrait until now. It feels as though Ms. Hansberry has walked into my living room and sat down beside me. What an honor and joy to read this. The writing is whip-smart, yet lovely and clear-eyed. What gifts this book, Ms. Perry, and Lorraine Hansberry are to the world.”
—Jacqueline Woodson, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and National Book Award Winner for Brown Girl Dreaming
“This is one of those books you need to read. Lorraine Hansberry was so dear, so gifted, so black, so singular in so many ways, that to miss the story of her life is to miss a huge part of ours. She left us way too soon, and yet the gift of her presence, so briefly among us, is still felt in the art she left behind. But not only in the art, but in the life. A life at last made comprehensible by this loving, attentive, thoughtful book.”
—Alice Walker
“I have always admired the brilliant Lorraine Hansberry. Now I treasure her even more. Imani Perry’s magnificently written and extremely well researched Looking for Lorraine reclaims for all of us the Lorraine Hansberry we should have had all along, the multifaceted genius for whom A Raisin in the Sun was just the tip of the iceberg. Though Hansberry’s life was brief, her powerful work remains vital and urgently necessary. One can say the same of this phenomenal book, which hopefully will lead more readers to both Hansberry’s published and unpublished works.”
—Edwidge Danticat, author of Brother, I’m Dying
“This powerful and profound book is the definitive treatment of a literary genius, political revolutionary, and spiritual radical—Lorraine Hansberry. Imani Perry takes us beyond the widespread misunderstandings of Hansberry’s complicated text into the zone of artistic greatness and moral courage—where Lorraine Hansberry belongs!”
—Dr. Cornel West
OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile
LisaGay Hamilton narrates the biography of the extraordinary black playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote the acclaimed play A RAISIN IN THE SUN. Hansberry accomplished much in her short 34 years on earth, and the steady cadence of Hamilton’s voice creates a mellow, informative, and poised narration of her story. Hamilton is not only informing the listener but also teaching and, most of all, sharing the uncommon details that shaped this energetic woman. Hansberry was passionate, active, and charismatic, especially when it came to the African-American community. Hamilton’s calm tone is unchanging, even while describing Hansberry’s colorful close relationships with artists James Baldwin and Nina Simone. This audiobook is like watching a documentary of someone paving the way for future artist-activists. T.E.C. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2018-06-12
An intimate portrait of the artist as a black woman at the crossroads.Perry (African-American Studies/Princeton Univ.; May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem, 2018, etc.) feels strongly that Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) is an "important writer who has far too little written about her [and]…about her life." This is a deeply personal book, less a biography than perhaps a "third person memoir" or "homage." Perry infuses the narrative with a sense of urgency and enthusiasm because she believes Hansberry has something to teach us in these "complicated times." Impressively, she tells her subject's story in a tightly packed 200 pages. In her early years, Hansberry was radiant. The middle-class girl who grew up on Chicago's South Side wasn't the best student, but she had a "gift for leadership." She displayed a sense of melancholy and loneliness as well as an insatiable intellectual yearning. After briefly attending the University of Wisconsin, she moved to New York, first to Greenwich Village and then Harlem, where she immersed herself in politics and 1950s activism with other intellectuals and artists. She married her partner in the radical left, Robert Nemiroff, in 1953. They divorced, amicably, in 1964, and Nemiroff would remain a friend, caretaker, and champion of her writings and legacy. Perry argues that we must deal head-on with Hansberry's sexuality; it's "unquestionable" that she was a lesbian, and the author discusses it in detail. Perry also smartly delves into the inspirations for Hansberry's brilliant The Raisin in the Sun (kitchenette buildings, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes) and engagingly explores Hansberry's profound friendships with James Baldwin and Nina Simone. In her later years, Hansberry was an American radical; radicalism "was both a passion and a commitment. It was, in fact, a requirement for human decency."Throughout this animated and inspiring biography, Perry reminds us that the "battles Lorraine fought are still before us: exploitation of the poor, racism, neocolonialism, homophobia, and patriarchy."
