Week 4

JJ
by Josephine Jones10 views·Updated Jul 7, 2021
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Hansbury to Hamilton

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated

  1. Hey everybody, I'm looking forward to the first artist presentations
  2. this week and the deep dive we're going to take
  3. into Lorraine Hansberry's a raisin in the Sun.
  4. We have a great production to watch and um the
  5. introduction to the play in the Norton anthology of drama.
  6. The excerpts from the library is really good and um
  7. you know, does does the job and introduction should do,
  8. It sets the tone for what um the play accomplishes.
  9. And it also in order to see that you need
  10. to know the context of the time, the housing issues
  11. in Chicago.
  12. Um and everything.
  13. The central tension, of course, is between walter the younger
  14. um and his dreams of having the privilege that he
  15. sees the white man, he drives around, enjoy in terms
  16. of capitalist expansion of his family's wealth and how he
  17. hasn't done that, but he has a chance at it
  18. if he can get a hold of his um father's
  19. uh inheritance.
  20. So, so the tension is between his dream and what
  21. the women in his life think of that obviously, and
  22. some of the women's dreams too, but if you you
  23. know, think of going backwards in time from Hamilton uh
  24. you know uh to look at Hansberry and where this
  25. comes from.
  26. Um that's what the presentations about this time, you can
  27. listen to Lorraine talk about her work here and then
  28. I just try and give you kind of my thoughts
  29. about how things relate in these presentations.
  30. Um The module is really pretty straight forward this week.
  31. Um and I look forward to hearing what you have
  32. to say about a raisin in the sun and the
  33. artist presentations in the upcoming discussions.
  34. I appreciate all the writing, the walking and the drawing
  35. that we have all done and I encourage you to
  36. continue to do that throughout the quarter as you um
  37. can and sort of push yourself to do just a
  38. little bit more of whatever it is you might be
  39. able to do.
  40. Um if you took it real easy because I find
  41. that we're gonna be integrating a lot of big ideas
  42. um, and getting a sense of of what it must
  43. have been like to write the script, which just has
  44. such incredible moments in it.
  45. So, um, I was gonna just share a couple of
  46. those with you, just from the introduction.
  47. Um, big walter quoted as saying Alina who are really
  48. related to Lena this time, uh seem like God didn't
  49. see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams,
  50. he would say.
  51. But he did give us Children to make them dreams
  52. seem worthwhile.
  53. Um, just the language in your ear of Lena's voice,
  54. the southern, the generation that moved from the south to
  55. the north and the great migration.
  56. Um, so when walter lee doesn't get his way.
  57. Um, as the introduction points out, he experiences it as
  58. rejection. And Lena sees this as the, as the result
  59. of the change in the values between the generations.
  60. So, um, Again, in the introduction on 1195, you my
  61. Children, she says, but how different we done become.
  62. And beneath a uh, is like Hansberry yourself at a
  63. younger age, restless and full of ideas caught between the
  64. two suitors.
  65. She chooses africa.
  66. And that whole relationship between the the revolution in africa
  67. against colonialism going on at the same time as the
  68. civil rights struggle was going on in the United States.
  69. So definitely another worldwide phenomenon.
  70. Um, look forward to the artist presentations.
  71. It's great if they're in the 60s and 70s, it's
  72. okay if they're not.
  73. And I'll talk to you online.
  74. Thanks