'An informal autobiography' is stated on the front cover of the book 'To Be Young, Gifted and Black', rightly so. Lorraine Hansberry is easily one of the best writers we've had in America. I'm so happy I have read her autobio. What I found great and unique about it was that the book incorporated excerpts of her plays and interviews she gave during her great success with 'Raisin in the Sun' and letters that she has written to people so on. She was a big smoker, friends with many celebrities but here we get to read what she has written in her journal it seems-and her expressions are not always pleasant. You get the sense of her isolation and how it was like for her as a black woman in America-which she so wonderfully depicted in her literature. I didn't know she wrote opera as well (Toussaint). She was well educated and wanted others to know and tell about our (black people) culture.
She was the youngest of four children in Southside Chicago- 1930.
Nina Simone wrote a song about her-same title as the book.
'Genuine drama has a way of hiding out in the essences of scenes rather than in their trappings, i think.'
-L.H.
'Look at the work that awaits you! Write if you will, but write about the world as it is and as you thinkit ought to be and must be-if there is to be a world. Write about all the things that men have written about since the beginning of writing and talking-but write to a point. Work hard at it, care about it. Write about our people: tell their story. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don't pass it up. Use it...this nation needs your gifts. Perfect them!'
-Playwright (character in Hansberry's stageplay)
'There's always something to love. And if you ain't learned that, then you ain't learned nothing.'
-L.H.
'Never be afraid to sit awhile and think.'
-L.H.
