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A review by lmurray74
Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry
5.0
A brilliant piece of scholarship that had me falling in love with Lorraine and grieving when she died. There is so much I didn't know about Lorraine Hansberry before reading this book and I wish I had read a book like this a lot sooner. I knew her as the author of A Raisin in the Sun but I didn't know how committed she was to the socialist cause and radical politics. I didn't know about her friendships with James Baldwin and Nina Simone, and her work with Paul Robeson and Du Bois.
Imani Perry comments that this book is less a biography and maybe a third person memoir. Perry spent endless hours with the Lorraine Hansberry archives at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. From this she has woven deep love and admiration, with Lorraine's incisive wit and intellect. It does feel that Lorraine is writing this too, in part. It certainly makes her "spark and sparkle". There are no assumptions made about her life, everything is backed up by Lorraine's words and actions. At times Perry infers that something may have been the case, but there too she is backing it up with Lorraine's words.
Imani Perry is a powerful writer with the ability to to write in an accessible manner without losing deep analysis and critique. I thank her for writing this book and for opening my eyes to the wonder that is Lorraine Hansberry. She never lost her radical being and her commitment to civil rights and equity. There is so much in her life that needs to be known to a much greater audience. Perry writes that Lorraine's story remains in the gaps despite the fact that she was widely influential.
"She did things that were politically dangerous. She was brave and also fearful, experimental and superb. She failed and hurt. Her tradition, then, cannot be reduced to the picture of greatness. It has to entail the vagaries of imagination and the many circumstances that excite it" (p. 3).
Imani Perry comments that this book is less a biography and maybe a third person memoir. Perry spent endless hours with the Lorraine Hansberry archives at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. From this she has woven deep love and admiration, with Lorraine's incisive wit and intellect. It does feel that Lorraine is writing this too, in part. It certainly makes her "spark and sparkle". There are no assumptions made about her life, everything is backed up by Lorraine's words and actions. At times Perry infers that something may have been the case, but there too she is backing it up with Lorraine's words.
Imani Perry is a powerful writer with the ability to to write in an accessible manner without losing deep analysis and critique. I thank her for writing this book and for opening my eyes to the wonder that is Lorraine Hansberry. She never lost her radical being and her commitment to civil rights and equity. There is so much in her life that needs to be known to a much greater audience. Perry writes that Lorraine's story remains in the gaps despite the fact that she was widely influential.
"She did things that were politically dangerous. She was brave and also fearful, experimental and superb. She failed and hurt. Her tradition, then, cannot be reduced to the picture of greatness. It has to entail the vagaries of imagination and the many circumstances that excite it" (p. 3).