Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine

Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry

Winner of the 2019 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction

Winner of the Shilts-Grahn Triangle Award for Lesbian Nonfiction

Winner of the 2019 Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award

A New York Times Notable Book of 2018

A revealing portrait of one of the most gifted and charismatic, yet least understood, Black artists and intellectuals of the twentieth century.

Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one workâ€”until now. In 2018, Hansberry will get the recognition she deserves with the PBS American Masters documentary â€œLorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heartâ€ and Imani Perryâ€™s multi-dimensional, illuminating biography, Looking for Lorraine.

After the success of A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry used her prominence in myriad ways: challenging President Kennedy and his brother to take bolder stances on Civil Rights, supporting African anti-colonial leaders, and confronting the romantic racism of the Beat poets and Village hipsters. Though she married a man, she identified as lesbian and, risking censure and the prospect of being outed, joined one of the nationâ€™s first lesbian organizations. Hansberry associated with many activists, writers, and musicians, including Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, among others. Looking for Lorraine is a powerful insight into Hansberryâ€™s extraordinary lifeâ€”a life that was tragically cut far too short.

A Black Caucus of the American Library Association Honor Book for Nonfiction

A 2019 Pauli Murray Book Prize Finalist
Country USA
Brand Beacon Press
Manufacturer Beacon Press
Binding Hardcover
Color Grey
ReleaseDate 2018-09-18
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780807064498

Country	USA
Brand	Beacon Press
Manufacturer	Beacon Press
Binding	Hardcover
Color	Grey
ReleaseDate	2018-09-18
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780807064498

Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry