Extracts: A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Don't you see there isn't any real progress... there is only one large circle that we march in, around and around, each of us with our own little picture in front of us - our own little mirage that we think is the future.

A Raisin in the Sun is a wonderful play, one of the best I've read in a while. Lorraine Hansberry shows how people define themselves and strive for their dreams; in progressing towards what they hope will be a better life, they discover new sources of strength in themselves but also risk self-destruction and undermining others. The play ends on a mix of good spirits and foreboding; the Younger family haven't had it easy up until that point, and they have frightening circumstances to deal with in the future, but they're still alive, fighting with one other and against the world.

Meet the Youngers
The Youngers are a black family living in Chicago's South Side in the years after World War II. The patriarch of the family, Big Walter, has passed away, and his material legacy is an insurance check worth 10,000 dollars - a boon to his family, who have long wanted to get out of their airless, lightless hole of an apartment.

There are six of them: Lena (Mama), Big Walter's widow and the matriarch of the family; their adult children, Walter Lee and Beneatha; and Walter Lee's wife, Ruth, and son, Travis.

Walter Lee is a chauffeur, and both Lena and Ruth work as domestic servants, cooking and cleaning in white people's homes. Unlike Walter Lee, it's apparent that Lena and Ruth don't stop working when they get home; with some help from Beneatha, they take care of all the chores in their apartment, while Walter Lee spends time with his friends, shooting the breeze and cooking up grand business schemes. Beneatha (who at a low point in the play speaks the words excerpted at the start of the post) is a college student, a first for her family. In the course of the play she's also wooed by two very different men - George Murchison and Joseph Asagai - each representing a certain kind of future for her, should she choose one of them.

Dreams deferred, denied, or achieved
Everyone in the Younger family has a dream they want to realize. For Beneatha it's becoming a doctor, and for Walter Lee it's running his own business as a bigshot executive. Lena's primary goal is to move to a real house, something Ruth longs for as well. The only affordable neighborhood within an easy distance of their workplaces in the city is a suburb where only white families live.

Personal flaws and family tension could keep their dreams from materializing. Hansberry might have gone the route of having the family be on the same page, united by the same beliefs and outlook as they fight for a better life, but instead she wrote them as messy and real. Walter Lee fights a good deal with his sister about the man she should marry, and with Lena about what to do with the 10,000 dollars; he wants a chance to be his own boss, and if Beneath got to go to college, why can't he have his opportunity to develop himself?

Walter Lee and Ruth's marriage also goes through a lot of strain. Ruth doesn't have Beneatha's booksmarts or Lena's central position in the family, but it's a testament to Hansberry's writing skills that instead of being a sidelined two-dimensional figure she's distinct, given good lines, a dry wit and a complex character, and made to confront her own difficult choices. As for Lena, she looks at her kids with love and pride and, at times, incomprehension. Of those in the younger generation, Ruth (the aptly named daughter-in-law), is the only one who consistently connects with her.

On top of all the intrafamilial conflict, there are people in their community who would resent their move to a better home, taking it as a sign that the Younger family doesn't know "their place." The one neighbor we do see, Mrs. Johnson, is a riot - a funny portrait of a woman who tries to pass off her nosiness and envy as sincere concern. There are also other people in their community who would more actively undermine their attempts to realize their dream.

And finally there's the all-white neighborhood they want to move to. The neighborhood association sends a representative to try to dissuade them from coming to live there; in a morbidly funny moment, Beneatha refers to him as the "Welcoming Committee," a joke taken up by Ruth and Walter Lee:

Mama: What he want?
Ruth: (In the same mood as Beneath and Walter) To welcome you, honey.
Walter: He said they can't hardly wait. He said the one thing they don't have, that they just dying to have out there, is a fine family of fine colored people!

Lorraine Hansberry's own parents fought racial residential segregation in the northern U.S. (read about the Supreme Court Case, Hansberry vs. Lee) and she knew first hand how violent the situation could get, with black families getting fire-bombed out of their homes, attacked by mobs, and worse.

What is progress?
Returning to the excerpt at the top of the post - is progress an illusion? It's fitting that Beneatha makes this pessimistic pronouncement, as someone who's still figuring out her identity.

On the one hand she's the first college-educated person in her family and wants to be a doctor. But if she marries could she still pursue a career in medicine? (Her brother is leaning on her to marry George Murchison, who would be least likely to support her career.) So what is her identity, her role in the family and society at large, meant to be? And what options are available to her as a black woman who wants to go into medicine? She isn't expected to take charge of her family; for better or worse, Lena comes to expect that of Walter Lee, not necessarily because he has good judgment but because he's the man of the house. With her education and career aspirations Beneatha finds herself in an unprecedented position in her family.

Across the generations, the Younger family has progressed out of slavery, then out of the South, to live in their own apartment and to send one family member to college. Even when the "Welcoming Committee" representative from the white neighborhood comes to speak with them, he doesn't threaten them outright, as Beneatha puts it:

Oh - Mama - they don't do it like that any more. He talked Brotherhood. He said everybody ought to learn how to sit down and hate each other with good Christian fellowship.

Progress seems to work uphill, with backsliding and resistance for every bit of ground gained. The newer generations - Walter Lee and Beneatha - are building off of the sacrifices of their parents and forebears in different ways, while also fighting certain battles all over again: not what previous generations fought against - not slavery and not the southern Ku Klux Klan specifically - but against similar forces, in new shapes and forms. They also fight to understand who they are and where they belong in society, and to understand how the legacy of their parents and ancestors affects them; they absorb it, honor it, chafe against it, turn to it sometimes for guidance and mock or ignore it otherwise. The sum total of Big Walter's legacy - along with what Lena has imparted to her kids - is more than 10,000 dollars.

Any push for progress requires risk. Sometimes the desire for a better life is so consuming that it blinds people to potential dangers as they work impatiently towards it. Then again, focusing too much on the dangers keeps people where they are, relatively safe but also miserable and diminished.

Why haven't we seen more of Hansberry?
In addition to being very active in the Civil Rights movement, Lorraine Hansberry made history in theater with A Raisin in the Sun, becoming the youngest American playwright to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Tragically her life was cut short, at age 34, by pancreatic cancer.

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I read The Modern Library edition of A Raisin in the Sun; it's also the first work I'm writing up for the Classics Club Challenge (you can find the link to the challenge post in the Reading Lists tab at the top of the page as well).

Week in Seven Words #126

armed
I find a black and white photo of her tucked inside a book. It was taken decades ago, during her army training. She stands by a tree and holds a gun, the butt of it resting against the ground; she looks at the photographer with a smile that gives away nothing.

captured
She sits alone in her roller-skating gear and with a smile and a little wave snaps a photo of herself out in the bright world.

missed
On a walk in the park I come across a few actors who are yelling things at each other that sound vaguely Shakespearean but don't carry well in the open air. I ask a couple of people who are leaving, "What play is this?" Silently they point to my feet, where I stand on the giant HAMLET written on the pavement in pink chalk. (To thine own clueless self be true.) Speaking of which, Polonius comes out soon after, and you can tell he's an experienced actor. His voice projects, and he speaks his lines well. Too bad he has to die sooner than everyone else.

packing
I'm starting to associate my old apartment with boxes and hamburgers and papers that multiply every time I look the other way.

sapless
I watch eleven and a half minutes (yes I counted) of yet another T.V. show for kids where the characters don't have distinct personalities - they all do the same things and sound alike when they speak. Their misunderstandings are minor and are resolved almost immediately. The message for kids is that if you and your friends are as similar as possible there's less of a chance that you'll be inconvenienced by disagreements, compromises, and independent thoughts.

siesta
In the shade of the beech tree the mallards are napping.

sitting duck
When the car is stuck in traffic, and the frustrated driver is just spoiling for a fight, there you are, captive in the passenger's seat.

Good Short Fiction: Coyote Peyote (by Carole Nelson Douglas)

Title: Coyote Peyote
Author: Carole Nelson Douglas
Where I read it: Tails of Wonder and Imagination: Cat Stories (ed. Ellen Datlow)

Midnight Louie works as a detective in Las Vegas. You can find him at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino by the koi pond, which supplies him his dinner. He cuts a striking figure - black with "tourmaline-green" eyes and "topping twenty pounds soaking wet" - and has a pretty high opinion of himself. It isn't easy being the foremost feline detective (maybe the only feline detective?) in a city like Las Vegas.

In the story he's approached by a wild coyote who needs his help; the coyote death rate has soared at the borders of a real estate development called Peyote Skies just outside the city. Louie's first assumption is that they're getting killed off for trespassing:

No wonder the coyotes are goners. They were trespassing on some high-end new real estate of the first water. I sit under one of the paired yucca trees that mark the development's entrance to read the billboard, which features colors like trendy turquoise, orange and lavender bordered in a chorus line of alternating jalapeno peppers and howling coyotes.

Though I was curious about the mystery of the dying coyotes (and a dark tale it turned out to be) it was really Louie himself - and the idea of a cat detective - that drew me into the story (I'm sure he'd be happy about that). He narrates like a film noir detective - cool and perceptive, given to colorful descriptions, and knowing just how good he is. There's no femme fatale in the story, but he does get a sidekick for a while - Happy Hocks, a half-grown coyote who worships the ground Louie struts on. Along with the humor, attitude, and striking characterizations I loved the strong sense of place in this story: Las Vegas and its environs through the eyes of a feline who's seen it all.

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Other stories in this collection include Puss-Cat (by Reggie Oliver) and The White Cat (by Joyce Carol Oates), along with Every Angel is Terrifying (by John Kessel), Tiger in the Snow (by Daniel Wynn Barber), Gordon the Self-Made Cat by Peter S. Beagle, and Guardians by George R. R. Martin.

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This post has been linked to at this week's Short Stories on Wednesdays at Simple Clockwork.

Week in Seven Words #125

assured
He loves looking at photos of his parents and older siblings. When you point them out one by one and name them he smiles confidently. To them he belongs, and they belong to him.

convection
Throughout the heatwave I resolutely (many would say idiotically) leave the air conditioning off; there's a breeze coming in through the window - a warm breeze, but at least the air is circulating – and I can live with that. When the thunderstorm finally rips through the city, I notice at once how the quality of the air changes, pouring in cool and damp. I don't think I've ever loved thunderstorms more.

curious
On the subway a young man is openly reading a paperback copy of Fifty Shades of Gray. From time to time he looks up from the book and stares into the middle distance.

fortitude
I'm having a pleasant time, even though the sun's in my eyes and the rock I'm sitting on is trying to pry open a new orifice in my body.

parched
On a hot dark night people are gathered moth-like around the lit fountain.

pigments
At the restaurant he turns the table into a palette on which he mixes the dull green of smushed peas with glossy drippings of soy sauce and bright ketchup red.

reeled
I can't remember the last time I set foot in a movie theater (was it for The Fantastic Mr. Fox in 2009?), but I enjoy the experience. It's a week night, so it isn't too crowded. I like the hugeness of the sights and sounds. I even like the previews (no matter how bad a movie turns out to be, the previews are pretty much always entertaining).

Thinking about spring

This past spring often felt like summer, but it was still uniquely and beautifully spring. I've posted about Philly streets in springtime and windblown tulips in Bowling Green.

Here are some more photos of the season that just passed:

Worth Watching: Footnote (2011)

Title: Footnote
Director: Joseph Cedar
Language: Hebrew
Rating: PG

Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar-Aba) and his son, Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi), are both Israeli university professors and Talmudic scholars. Eliezer represents an older, unfashionable school of scholarship based on pain-staking life-long narrow work that may or may not lead to any noteworthy findings. At one point in his career, he had come close to publishing decades of his research in what might have been a ground-breaking book, but a chance discovery made by an academic rival, Yehuda Grossman (Micah Lewensohn), doomed Eliezer's manuscript to the city dump. When the movie begins, Eliezer has few publications and accolades to his name, and furthermore lacks the social skills to advance in the university. Shunted to the side, he buries himself in his study at home or in the shadowy corners of the national library. He also regards Uriel with great bitterness.

Uriel is in many ways the opposite of his father. He's charismatic and adept at schmoozing and departmental politicking. He's a bright and dazzling researcher who publishes prolifically on many different topics and has written popular books about his scholarship; he's also a well-regarded lecturer, delivering his talks with wit and passion. He tells a colleague at one point that it's important to keep moving forward, to be active, to write and publish and speak out about your ideas as much as you can even if you're not yet sure of their validity. Though he's only middle-aged, Uriel is already an academic titan whose success fuels Eliezer's bitterness and resentment, along with his contempt for Uriel's entire approach to scholarship.

For years, Uriel has been nominating Eliezer for the prestigious Israel Prize, coveted by academics. Uriel knows how much the prize would mean to his embittered father. But why would Eliezer want it so much? If he doesn't respect the current crop of academics and what they stand for, why would he crave their recognition? The answer to that lies at the heart of Footnote. Eliezer might be devoted to truth and objective scholarly pursuits, but he's human, isn't he? His ego still demands to be fed, even by people he considers unworthy. Maybe he doesn't care that the prize committee, in his opinion, is made up of intellectual lightweights. The prize itself could stand for truth and excellence irrespective of who's handing it out; in the recent past it may have been awarded to undeserving people, but Eliezer is proud enough to believe that he could polish off some of the tarnish it's accumulated over the years. He also wants to see himself recognized for once as more than just a scholarly footnote.

In Footnote, it's difficult to fathom the extent to which people are motivated by truth versus petty ego or pride. A great example of this toxic mix of truth and ego emerges in an intense, brilliantly written confrontation between Uriel and Yehuda Grossman, the professor who damaged Eliezer's academic career. Grossman's motives are left ambiguous. Did he undermine Eliezer's career because he genuinely thought that Eliezer was a plodding, problematic researcher? Or did he do it out of jealousy and spite? Or why not both?

The idea that academia is a bastion of objectivity often blinds people, including the academics themselves, to the very human and sometimes very ugly personal motives that they're all vulnerable to, no matter how high-minded or objective they think they are as scholars. Eliezer's contempt for his son's work, for example, stems not only from genuine scholarly disdain but from Eliezer's wounded ego. As long as he has the scholarly justification for his animosity, Eliezer can dismiss the deeper and messier truths in his life and ignore the ways in which he hurts his son.

The extent of Eliezer's petty rancor is never clear. He seems largely disconnected from emotions, both his own and other people's, and (at least from what we see on screen) is rarely open to others. Maybe most of his bitterness towards his son really is provoked by the sloppiness he perceives in Uriel's work and his disappointment in how academic standards have fallen more generally. His beef against Uriel and the wider academic world really could be driven mostly by scholarly considerations. But maybe his pride has blinded him to any excellence in his son's work. It's so easy for resentment and wounded pride to be mixed in deeply with more principled motives, until they're all indistinguishable.

When Eliezer receives a phone call out of the blue informing him that he's won the Israel Prize, the rush of emotion and the gratification to his ego is so great that he's blinded to details that he would have picked up on immediately under normal circumstances. What follows is the happiest day of his life. Finally he has it - the top prize, the place among his peers, the recognition of his life's work and proof perhaps that his approach to scholarship isn't obsolete.

A day later, Uriel also receives a phone call. It's from the Israel Prize committee, and they're summoning him to a private meeting. As it turns out, Uriel won the Israel Prize, but because of clerical carelessness his father was notified. Now the committee wants Uriel to inform Eliezer of the mistake.

Uriel objects. He argues that it would kill his father to not only get the prize taken from him but to see it awarded to his son. He claims that Eliezer in fact deserves the prize - has deserved it for years. Even later, when he realizes that his father's achievements maybe aren't so grand in scope, Uriel emphasizes the personal devastation and the irreparable blow to the father-son relationship that would result. It isn't as if Uriel is close to his father; Eliezer's personality and preoccupation with his work have made him distant from nearly everyone. But Uriel fears that his father would loathe him.

What if Uriel were to give up the prize and maintain the charade that it was intended for his father all along? He would spare his father from public humiliation and personal hurt but also make him an unwitting accomplice to a lie; Eliezer, in his scholarly work at least, has always been meticulous and accurate. Furthermore, Uriel loves recognition - one key way in which he's similar to his father. By passing on the award, will he ever be able to claim it for himself? Would he ever get recognition and respect from his father?

If Eliezer found out about the deception, how would he react, knowing that the award was granted to him thanks to his son's efforts? Uriel's actions may be self-sacrificing, but he has also trapped Eliezer in a fiction. Because Uriel wants to protect his father's ego from yet another blow, he maintains an illusion around him. Could Eliezer ever penetrate it? This is his one chance to be embraced by his academic peers, when for decades he's labored among a handful of like-minded scholars in the depths of the library, people coming to identify him primarily as 'Uriel's father' rather than as a notable academic in his own right. The award reflects what he feels he deserves, and what his son wants him to have in order to feel less embittered - but does he merit it? Does his fragile pride, and his son's need to protect it, trap them both in a lie? What does the award itself come to mean, compromised as it is?

The movie starts with a lie - an anecdote distorted by Uriel about a time his father supposedly inspired him, when instead Eliezer was acting out of pride (and not with much honesty, it seems). The movie ends with a public lie too, as far as we know. My first reaction to the ending was, "What a cop out!" but then I came to appreciate its thought-provoking quality. The movie in some ways is like an incomplete text. We're given some facts and footnotes about the characters, we witness their surface struggles and hear some general principles stated: that there are some things a son shouldn't know about his father, and that a man shouldn't envy his son or his pupil. But the characters also have dimensions only hinted at. Their relationships are shown in glimpses, brief emotional exchanges and meaningful silences, that suggest depths we can't readily access. Watching them, we're interpreters of a complex text.

Uriel for instance has children of his own, including a son, Josh (Daniel Markovich), who seems to have no ambitions in life. Has he tuned out because he grew up in the shadow of his father and grandfather, who are both obsessed with greatness? Does he recoil from the hypocrisies and pettiness so often found at the heart of ambitious enterprise? Maybe in observing Uriel and Eliezer he concludes that it's impossible for a son to truly please a father. We never find out what's going on with Josh, but those are some likely guesses. In the beginning of the movie, we hear that Eliezer's wife, Yehudit (Aliza Rosen), has the title of 'doctor' but never learn what kind of doctor she is; though she and her husband live under the same roof, they don't really live together - they sleep in separate rooms and engage in some stilted conversation - but we never find out why they're so distant from each other, though we can make guesses. Uriel's wife, Dikla (Alma Zack), is primarily his sounding board and occasionally punctures his pretensions about himself. We know relatively little about the wives and children, because everyone in the movie is secondary to the father and son, their egos and demands. And even the father and son aren't fully revealed to us, though I think by the end they learn a good deal about each other and maybe about themselves.

Both Shlomo Bar-Aba and Lior Ashkenazi give wonderful performances (Bar-Aba excels at playing a closed-off quietly tormented character). One problem I initially had with the ending was that I wanted a father-son confrontation; they barely speak to each other throughout the movie. Then I realized that they do have a confrontation, obliquely, through text. They communicate to each other through their scholarly habits and their use of language. One word that stands out is 'fortress.' A fortress can be a means of defense. It can also be a trap, shutting people away within its walls. A fortress can seem impregnable, when in reality it has fundamental weaknesses in its structure that you can spot and exploit if you know where to look.

Week in Seven Words #124

ambiance
Dinner is held in a dim and peaceful room, the windows framing a pink sunset. On the table, flowers are cradled in a vase.

chipping
I'm fed up with "good intentions" - not actual good intentions but the expression itself: "Don't be mad, I have good intentions" or "I'm telling you that nearly everything about you stinks, but that's ok, because I have good intentions." They're an excuse for every insensitive remark, personal affront, and belabored criticism; they absolve the speaker of any wrong-doing. There's no need for self-examination or a sincere attempt to speak with tact and empathy. How can anyone be hurt or irritated by good intentions? ("That's one of your problems right there - you're too sensitive. No, it's true. Believe me, I'm telling you this out of the goodness of my heart.")

drippy
Walking in the rain wearing sandals that nick my toes.

galvanized
For the most part she's an easy dog to watch over. She solicits belly rubs, flops down on the carpet by my feet for a rest, and tussles with some of her chew toys. But there are ten minutes when a switch flips in her puppy mind and she tears around the room in a circuit, over the back of the couch and under the bed and back out again.

mellowed
A game of Scrabble on a bench outdoors with a breeze from the river.

photons
Light shimmering on the underside of stone.

sweetness
When I tuck them into bed they sing me the lullabies that their parents usually sing to them.