I’m writing an essay criticizing a piece of criticism. There’s intellectual wankery for you. I’m not satisfied with it yet, but I’m not sure how I want to fix it. I figure that ye olde intarweb often gives me good feedback, so if you are bored and you want to skim it (about 3 pages) I’m not turning it in until Monday. 🙂 Feedback is appreciated.

Universality in A Raisin in the Sun
Almost 50 years after it was first produced A Raisin in the Sun still has a lot to teach. Margaret B. Wilkerson, in her essay “The Sighted Eyes and Feeling Heart of Lorraine Hansberry” tries to address some of the ways in which Hansberry’s writing was universal, but she falls short of being able to address all of them partially due to her attempt to address all of Hansberry’s writing in too short of a space. Her focus tends to be on why Hansberry’s writing is not offensive rather than addressing specifically how it achieves universality. This focus means that a reader attempting to generalize to concepts more relevant in the modern era are often left having to fill in gaps. A Raisin in the Sun is still so relevant because the story is rich with nuances about class and gender relations in addition to the more standard racial readings.

Without intending to Wilkerson brings up the idea of straddling multiple worlds. She discusses the fact that Hansberry was dismissed by some critics because she came from a middle class background financially therefore critics wanted to claim that she could not truly identify with the working class family she wrote about. Wilkerson brings up briefly that Hansberry spent much of her early life living in a poor black ghetto due to the segregated housing of the era and she also mentions an incident where Hansberry was assaulted as a young child for dressing better than the kids around her. When her family finally won a legal battle allowing them to buy a home in a “white” neighborhood the house was attacked by a racist mob and Hansberry barely escaped injury. These brief references do not adequately address what it means to straddle multiple worlds in terms of economic class. Living in a ghetto exposes a person to deprivation even if one is not directly suffering oneself. Hansberry would have been very unlikely to be able to escape seeing her friends suffer and when out in public spaces many white people would have automatically assumed she was also a poor child and would have treated her accordingly. Thus, despite the fact that she was not actually deprived in her youth there would be no way for her to have been ignorant of poverty and its effects. In the 1940’s when Hansberry was a child her race would have been more relevant than her gender or her socio-economic class in determining how she was treated. However, for a modern reader, issues of gender and class sometimes trump race. A poor latino of today is fully capable of understanding the struggles of the Younger family due to the universality of poverty despite the fact that critics of older generations considered this play to be about the black struggle for equality. Similarly, whereas Beneatha represents a pre-second wave feminist her struggle to break through the glass ceiling of the 1950’s is one that is forced upon many immigrant children of today.

Wilkerson also brings up the idea that Hansberry had to struggle to honor her family and racial identity. This prompts a reader to wonder what it means to honor ones identity in a larger sense. One way that this can be examined is in seeing if a person validates or invalidates stereotypes—whether the stereotypes be about race, class, or gender. Wilkerson brings up some specific examples by examining different characters in the play to see how they honor themselves and speculating that there must be a correlation between the characters and Hansberry. The easiest to look at is Mama and how she can be at first dismissed as being simply a “Mammy” character. This simple brushoff fails upon closer examination as Mama is the catalyst in allowing her son to attain his manhood and integrity. Wilkerson explains that Mama “Embodies the race’s will to transcend and […] forms that critical link between the past and the future, [she] articulates and transmits the traditions of the race to the next generation. Her wisdom and compassion provide the context for him [Walter] to attain true manhood, to advance materially without becoming materialistic” (10). In this case Mama is honoring her identity as a caretaker and parent without simply verifying the stereotype of domineering controller of her family—she instead takes a step back and allows Walter to grow into his manhood. This can be universally understood as people look around at those who install cultural and gender pride above and beyond just race—do these people demand obedience to cultural values or do they teach them and then allow one to choose how one will follow the values? Given Walter’s struggle to follow the cultural values his mother has tried to instill most people can easily identify with trying to decide for themselves what aspects of their parent’s values are relevant for their life. Indeed, all of the primary adult characters in the play are struggling with their identities and what it means to honor them. Ruth has to decide what being a caring mother actually means when she has the conflicting needs of her unborn child and her currently living family. Beneatha is facing all of the limits society tries to force on her given her race, age, gender, and socio-economic class. Walter struggles with his desire to be independent and prove himself to the world despite overwhelming oppressive odds. These characters are all struggling with issues so universal that any reader can find something in the play to identify with. The problem with Wilkerson’s article is that she does not identify or seem to see just how universal these issues are in terms of how they shed light for the average reader. The most she can say about the play is that, “The miracle of this popular play is that Hansberry successfully involves her audience, whether white or black, in a complete identification and support for the struggles of this family” without seeing how these issues transcend simple race (11). It is quite possible that her limited view is a result of the era in which she wrote her response.

Overall the article is a good start in the direction of examining the universal appeal of the play but it just does not go deep enough. Wilkerson is limited in her examination because whereas she sees how the play transcends race she does not seem to understand that the struggles apply just as much to gender and socio-economic class.