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Lorraine Hansberry: Reimagining Biography: drawing by Hansberry with text below: March 22, 2018, Schomburg Center, NYC. Panel conversation with Margaret Wilkerson, Imani Perry, Soyica Colbert, Tracy Heather Strain. Moderated by Joy-Ann Reid.

On March 22, 2018, the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will co-present Lorraine Hansberry: Reimagining BiographyIn addition to the AMERICAN MASTERS documentary, Sighted Eyes|Feeling Heart, that aired on PBS in January 2018, three biographical treatments of the artist, activist, and public intellectual will be published in the next several years. Reimagining Biography panelists will be asked to address the feminisms, intersectionalities, political, and private-public voicings that shaped Hansberry’s life and her understanding of herself and the worlds she both lived in and created.

In 2010 the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture published an article, “Young, Gifted, Black, and Complicated: The Question of Lorraine Hansberry’s Legacy,” in their newsletter, Africana Heritage. In that article, Steven G. Fullwood, then Assistant Curator, Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture puts the incredible legacy of Lorraine Hansberry’s contribution as an artist, activist, public intellectual, and writer into context.

image of book cover of Looking for Lorraine by Imani Perry

Princeton University Professor Imani Perry joins WHYY The Takeaway for NPR Philadelphia to discuss her book, Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, for a live in-studio interview.

 

An image of Imani Perry is on the poster for author event at Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books

Black-owned Philadelphia bookstore Uncle Bobbie's Coffee & Books and the People’s Education Center, welcomed scholar Imani Perry for a reading and talk about her book, Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry.  Moderated by Marc Lamont Hill, the recorded event is available here.

image of book cover of Looking for Lorraine by Imani Perry

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins reviews Imani Perry’s recent book, noting that, “…Looking for Lorraine is something between a fan’s notes and an academic monograph, less an unpacking of the archive to reveal the life than an exercise in putting the archive in historical context. Its strongest chapters — on “A Raisin in the Sun” and Lorraine’s coming into her own as a public intellectual — are masterly syntheses of research and analysis.

image of book cover of Looking for Lorraine by Imani Perry (Beacon Press, 2018)

With permission by Beacon Press, the Paris Review published an excerpt from Imani Perry’s Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry (Beacon Press, 2018)

Image of book cover of Looking for Lorraine (Beacon Press, 2018) with image of author Imani Perry (photo by Sameer Khan)

Beacon Press announces the publication of Imani Perry’s Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry.

Here's an excerpt from Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, where author Imani Perry probes James Baldwin and Lorriane Hansberry’s relationship—“a deep, years-long intellectual partnership went beyond their shared identity as queer black writers.”

 

image of author Imani Perry (photo by Sameer Khan)

Eugene Holly Jr. interviews Imani Perry in anticipation of her forthcoming book, Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry.

The Harvard University Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) has made Robin Bernstein’s 1999 article, Inventing a Fishbowl: White Supremacy and the Critical Reception of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun available to the public. You can access and download the article here.