A Raisin in the Sun

In A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, which debuted on Broadway in 1959, the prospect of life insurance money from their late father offers life-changing options to the Youngers, an African-American family living in a cramped apartment on Chicago’s South Side. However, competing visions of how to use the money — for the grandmother Lena, her son Walter (with wife Ruth and son Travis), and her daughter Beneatha — threaten to tear apart a family already facing a pre-civil-rights-era America.