Raisin in the Sun

I just saw the play, Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1959, and made into a movie in 1961 starring Sydney Poitier. It is a story about a struggling black family in Chicago. The author was way ahead of her time. One of the characters is a female college student who questions the existence of god (to the horror of her mother). But she is mainly trying to find her African identity with her new friend, Joseph, a fellow student from Nigeria. I couldn't help thinking - what would Ms. Hansberry have thought if she knew that around the time she wrote the play, a young man from Kenya arrived in Hawaii to go to college. That young man married an American and their son was Barack Obama, who ended up living in Chicago and becoming a US Senator representing Illinois.

The title of the play is from "Harlem," a poem by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" Deferred dreams is a main theme in the play, and I couldn't help but think that almost 50 years later, a dream of a person like Barack Obama becoming President was actually within reach.