title: A Reader's Guide to Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (Multicultural Literature)
author:  Pamela Loos 
description: Grade 7 Up<i>A Raisin in the Sun</i> has become part of the literary canon and is required reading for many students. This guide is intended to help them better appreciate the social milieu out of which this play emerged. Accordingly, it focuses on major characters in one chapter each, in which their strengths, weaknesses, and roles in the drama are discussed. Other chapters discuss its plot, themes, and importance; Hansberry's life; and other works by her. In many ways, the play's time and plot are vestiges of a distant American past that most students today cannot easily relate to, making this volume a fine resource.<i>Carol Jones Collins, Columbia High School, Maplewood, NJ</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: S E R I E S  E D I T O R S :
  W. GEIGER ELLIS, ED.D., UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA, EMERITUS
  and
  ARTHEA J. S. REED, PH.D., UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, RETIRED
  A  T E A C H E R ’ S  G U I D E  T O  T H E  S I G N E T  A N D  P L U M E  E D I T I O N S
  O F  T H E  S C R E E N P L A Y  
  LORRAINE HANSBERRY’S
  RAISIN IN THE SUN
  By DIANA MITCHELL, Ph.D 
  s
  
  I N T R O D U C T I O N  
  The certainty that the ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” can become reality for anyone willing to work
  for them is what we call the American dream. For many, the dream does come true. For many it does not. 
  Lorraine Hansberry knew about disappointment, false hope, and despair. For many of her African-American ancestors
  who had come north for a better life only to find exploitation and frustration, the dream had become a nightmare. In
  contemporary terms, she chronicles their nightmare in A Raisin in the Sun, an epic story of the Younger family struggling
  to realize the dream by escaping ghetto life. 