About the work
A play by Lorraine Hansberry, named after a line from Langston Hughes's poem Harlem. It premiered on 11 March 1959 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway, directed by Lloyd Richards, becoming the first Broadway play written by a Black woman and the first directed by a Black director.
Plot
The Younger family, living on Chicago's South Side, argues over how to use a life-insurance payout: mother Lena buys a house in a previously all-white neighbourhood, son Walter loses part of the remaining money to a swindler, while daughter Beneatha searches for her own identity. In the end the family turns down an offer to buy back the house.
Cultural significance
The play won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award in 1959 and ran for 530 performances; writer James Baldwin felt it showed, for the first time, a large part of the lived reality of Black people on a Broadway stage.