Val Muller

This award-winning play starts during the plot of Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (see my review from last week). We see the drama in Hansberry’s play from the perspective of Russ and Bev, who are selling their house because of bad memories that have happened within it. They don’t seem to care that, by allowing the first black family to purchase a home in an all-white neighborhood, they are causing a firestorm of controversy.

The play is so easy to read that it’s difficult. Reading down the page, sometimes there are conversations carried on with each person saying only one or two words. Sometimes these conversations are funny, but there are often deeper, less humorous things happening beneath the surface. Race relations are brought up early enough with Francine (and her husband Albert) working for the white family. The way Bev and Russ treat “the help” reminds us of the time period, 1959, and the controversy of the original play.

Also making a comeback from the original is Karl Lindner, the man who offered Hansberry’s original characters a great deal of money not to move into the all-white neighborhood. My favorite part of this play is what a jerk Karl is in this play as well. There wasn’t much characterization of him in Hansberry’s original, and I think Norris had a bit of fun with this guy. Betsy, Karl’s wife, is deaf, and I wonder if that’s the only reason she’s married him—because she can’t truly hear what a jerk he is. Still, she must know. Karl fusses about everything from a black family moving in to the neighborhood and the temperature of his iced tea. He is even asked to leave.  But again, this establishes the motif of deafness—either real or metaphorical.

Most jarring about this first section is the trouble that Russ and Bev are dealing with: their son committed suicide after it seems he couldn’t adapt to life again after experiencing war.  He had been accused of killing innocent people during his tour of duty, and he couldn’t handle the guilt. This adds a whole new dimension to the original play; it becomes the reason the Youngers were able to afford such a home when all the other, similar houses were priced much higher. Still, we learn that the Youngers never knew of the history of the house they bought; it seems the family (Bev and Russ) did not want to disclose that information in the interest of selling their home.

In the second part of the play, 2009, a white family is discussing plans to raze the original structure and build a better, bigger house upon it. This first scene is ridiculously uncomfortable, with the couple discussing various by-laws and architectural requirements with other officials and lawyers. They can’t seem to stay focused on one conversation, and as a reader I just wanted to slap them all. In the midst of this ridiculous conversation, Lena keeps trying to speak. She is the great-niece of Lena Younger, the grandmother in A Raisin in the Sun.

In this act, Lena returns to remind everyone of the history of the house (the fact that her great-aunt worked hard to earn the money for the house). It seems, however, that her real concern is that the renovation will start to improve the neighborhood so much that it will start pricing people out of it. It’s noted that the neighborhood, in proximity to the city, is meant to be a working-class neighborhood, but Lena implies that there is now a plan to change that, changing the demographics of the neighborhood along with the housing renovations.  

I found it interesting that the baby motif is continued from the original play. Everyone in the play seems to be expecting. In the original, this was a source of great hope—the perpetuity of one’s family through subsequent generations. This theme is furthered by Lena’s presence, reminding everyone of the history of the neighborhood (despite the fact that the group then gets distracted by discussing how integrating races actually brought more crime to the neighborhood—and then sheepishly try to cover up what had been said). In the end, there’s an argument between the new couple about the expected baby, which it seems the husband doesn’t even want. Hauntingly, the final scene returns to the theme of children, as we see the troubled soldier sitting down to write a note—we know it’s his suicide note—in the presence of his mother.

In the end, there’s a lot to analyze in this play, and it would be helpful to see it performed. In short, everyone has problems and agendas, and—like Walter and Ruth in Hansberry’s original—people rarely, if ever, truly see eye to eye.

I’m about to read a play called Clybourne Park, which borrows plotline from A Raisin in the Sun, so I thought I’d review the original play this week and review Clybourne Park next week. This review contains nearly a complete plot summary and will thus spoil the play if you haven’t read it. This is a play I teach most years, and I enjoy watching my students’ reaction to it. Just like the younger characters in the play, my students have been somewhat sheltered, and for some, this play opens their eyes.

A Raisin in the Sun is a play that takes place in the predominantly black South Side of Chicago during the time of racism in the mid-to-late 1950s. As the play opens, the Younger family is eagerly awaiting an insurance check for $10,000 (a significant amount of money in those days—much more significant than today). This is a life insurance payout for Walter Younger, the grandfather of the family, who has recently passed. Throughout the play, Mama, the grandmother, reminisces on the work ethic, values, and dreams of her late husband. She references that they had lost one baby to poverty and worked very hard to raise their other two children, Walter and Beneatha, who are now adults and live in the small apartment with Mama, Walter’s wife Ruth, and Walter and Ruth’s son, Travis. Needless to say, it’s a tiny apartment for so many people, but Mama works hard to provide for everyone to have a stable life.

The conflict comes when Walter reveals that he wants to use the insurance money for a business proposition: he wants to open up a liquor store with some friends. On the other hand, Beneatha would gladly accept the insurance money to pay for her schooling—she is currently an undergraduate student (the first in her family to go to college) and wants to be a doctor.

Walter criticizes his sister, telling her she should be a nurse instead, or just get married and be quiet. He disapproves of her ambition and her insistence on vocalizing her opinions on everything, which was not readily accepted for females of her time. At the same time, Walter is trying to become an entrepreneur, which was not easily done for African Americans at the time. Meanwhile, Mama just wants the family to get along. As if the arguments aren’t bad enough, Ruth finds out she’s pregnant with another child, and the family worries about where the baby will sleep—Travis already has to sleep on the couch in the living room, and Mama and Beneatha are doubled-up in Mama’s room. The trouble pushes Ruth to consider having an abortion, and the decision nearly tears the family apart. Walter, selfish to get rich quick, doesn’t seem to care about his wife’s decision. Mama is sorely disappointed, and Ruth is emotionally frustrated.

Mama, who has already lost a child to poverty, resolves to buy a house, allowing Ruth to have the baby. The most affordable house, though, is in an all-white neighborhood. Houses for blacks are much further away and much more expensive. Though the family is hesitant, they are happy to be moving…except Walter.

In the end, Walter makes a stupid decision. He takes the money and invests it with one of his “partners,” a man no one else in the family trusts. The man runs off with the money, leaving the family penniless. They have the chance to sell their house in the all-white neighborhood for a profit—the whites in the neighborhood do not want a black family to move in—or move into the neighborhood and work hard to collectively make enough money to pay off the house. Mama leaves it all up to Walter, who is ready to sell out in exchange for the money.

The final scene is the crux of the play. Walter rehearses to his horrified family just how he will act when the representative of Clybourne Park comes to give him the money in exchange for signing an agreement not to move into the all-white neighborhood. As he rehearses, he begins in a bitter way, but his dialogue breaks down so that at the end, he is speaking in a dialect that would have been used by slaves. In a sarcastic way, he is telling the imaginary man that he and his family are not worthy of living in the neighborhood—they are not human beings, and they have no right to dirty the white neighborhood. At this point in the play, Walter is crying because he realizes the true significance of his decision and words, especially because his young son is watching. Walter realizes how wrong he was, that he and his family need to retain their dignity, even at the cost of hard work and sacrifice.

It’s an important decision that perplexes my students every year (“Why didn’t he just take the money and screw the white neighborhood? Hell, I’d do it over again in another white neighborhood, too, and get rich off of ‘em!”). But in the historical context, it’s an important decision. Throughout the play, Mama references the fact that she lived so close to slavery that for her, pride and dignity—and basic luxuries like a safe place to live with enough food—are things she appreciates, but things that her children take for granted. This sense of pride is found again at the end of the play.

Just like Beneatha is trying to forge the way for other women to become doctors, Walter and his family decide to forge the way for people of all backgrounds to live in neighborhoods that would eventually, even if decades later, would no longer be segregated. It’s an inspiring ending and important for the younger generations to read. They live in a different world, and it’s healthy for them to understand the struggles that people fought so that we live in a largely equal world with largely equal rights.

If you aren’t able to see the play performed, it’s a quick read.

I look forward to reading Clybourne Park and see what Bruce Norris does with this storyline.

This is a fantasy/steampunk story taking place in England. A cripple named Gareth is bound to a wheelchair and detests his lack of mobility. As a child, however, he saves a girl in a moment of panic. She was falling from a tree, and without thinking, he was suddenly flying through the air to catch her. Of course, he kept his mobility a secret except for his “aunt” (his grandfather’s daughter, though she is younger than Gareth—the result of an affair), Tabitha.

His whole life, Gareth has been grumpy and solitary, a defense mechanism to protect him from the way people treat the handicapped. Only Tabitha, and the girl he saved and met for just a moment, treat him like a normal person. Bound during the day and in public, he spends his nights as a “Superman”—he puts on a suit of armor and flies around, scaring criminals away and protecting the innocent.

As Gareth grows, he learns that his grandfather, an aristocrat, is now penniless, and the only chance at salvation is for Gareth to marry a wealthy American girl who has insisted on marring him. Thinking she only wants his title, Gareth agrees grumpily—doing it only so that his beloved Tabitha can travel to America and find a husband who will make her happy.

He soon learns that his new wife is actually the girl he saved as a boy, and she’s been searching for him the whole time. But he remains grumpy—he has never been used to sharing his secrets with others, and he prefers a solitary life. Still, he’s torn by Jessamine’s beauty and the feelings she evokes in him. He doesn’t have time to dwell on any of this, though, as there’s an attempt on his life, and the mysterious servants who have been with him since childhood reveal a secret about his mother—and her link to the fairy world.

This was a fun, quick read. It took me only three settings. The pages passed without me realizing I was reading, and I easily cared about the characters. I also enjoyed the “bonnet club,” which Tabitha, Jessamine, and other women have joined. This is a union of female thinkers rebelling against the stereotypes of the time and building innovative machines to improve society of the time. Exposed to them, Gareth changes his opinion on the female gender as the story progresses. At the end, I was watching my Kindle rush toward 100%, and I found myself not wanting the story to end. In fact, my only complaint about the book is that it ends on a cliffhanger and makes me want to jump right into book two!

This review is part of a book tour with Juniper Grove. As such, there is a Rafflecopter giveaway you can enter!
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