Lorraine Hansberry was an amazing Black lesbian, commie, organizer and writer. I am now committed to learning more about her, and I'm so excited for this journey. This book is captivating and well-written, but probably not best for someone who doesn't want to hear the narrator's voice in a biography.

I received this as a digital galley from NetGalley.I am hard pressed to dislike a literary biography but this one was exceptionally good. I liked how Ms. Perry divulged gaps in the historical record and took care to not infer too much. Additionally, the structure of the book made it interesting to read. Instead of going strictly chronologically, Ms. Perry arranged the chapters by topic.Also it made me want to reread A Raisin In The Sun which is always a good thing.

I didn’t even know that the author of A Raisin In The Sun was a Black woman. Thank you Imani Perry, for bringing the story of Lorraine Hansberry’s life to us. She was a human who worked hard to spread words of truth and was taken from us too early.

A communion, but far too short - like her life. I should note that after discussing this with one of my book clubs, it wasn't most readers' cup of tea (though the sample set is admittedly small). People felt it was still too distant from Hansberry and that the author in the interest of being accurate was overly cautious and left too many key items a mystery - that perhaps she should have waited until there was greater access to Hansberry's papers to write the book. This is somewhat true, but it

Born into the intellectual and activist middle class, Lorraine Hansberry's soaring intellect and inner strength allowed her to produce the work she's best known for, A Raisin in the Sun. That work arose out of family history in Chicago. She was years ahead of her time, but her background and support from her family and friends has had lasting impact. As noted elsewhere, this is a very well researched account of her life, also containing her lesser known works and details of her life that led to

A brilliant biography of the even more brilliant Lorraine Hansberry. Though her life was tragically short, dying at the age of 34 for pancreatic cancer, Lorraine accomplished so much. She was the first Black woman playwright to have a play performed on Broadway (A Raisin in the Sun). She was also a dedicated activist, focusing on the liberation of Black people from colonialism abroad and Jim Crow at home.Author Imani Perry brings her back to life with this biography. Her analysis of Ms Hansberry...

I never seem to enjoy the genre of biography as much as I think I'm going to (I've realized memoir and autobiography both appeal to me more for whatever reason). But I quite liked this, at least as much as I have other biographies of historical LGBTQ people. I knew very little of her going into this and thought Lorraine was a complex, fascinating artist who fought against many different forms of social injustice from the 40s - early 60s.

“Looking For Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry” (2018) is a superb fact filled biographical work that explores the life of this famous playwright, activist, intellectual and feminist artist- writer. Although Lorraine (LH) was widely recognized and celebrated when her award winning play “A Raisin In The Sun” (1959) appeared on Broadway, author Imani Perry clearly illustrated there were many things previously unknown in LH’s short and extraordinary life, and this is the

A concise biography of an extraordinary writer and activist, Looking for Lorraine aims to elevate Hansberry to the level of fame attained by other recently repopularized radical Black artists, from James Baldwin to Nina Simone. Like Baldwin and Simone, who play pivotal roles in this biography, Hansberry fell out of favor with the general public after the collapse of the mass social movements of the sixties and seventies, even as her most accomplished work remained widely read and watched. Here a...

Although I haven't quite finished Looking for Lorraine (I'm at the 80% mark), I've decided to set out a few thoughts today to coincide with the publication of the book. I first became aware of the name "Lorraine Hansberry" while watching Raoul Peck's powerful documentary I Am Not Your Negro, which explores racism in the US through the writings and reminiscences of James Baldwin. Referencing a meeting in 1963 with then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to discuss the state of interracial relatio...

What an extraordinary woman! I’ve been craving a deeper knowledge and connection to my queer history. Being bi can be lonely sometimes. Reading about awesome queer folks really helps. The narration was excellent, I highly recommend the audiobook.

I want to start this review with a simple statement: This might be one of the best biographies I have read to date. I don't throw around this sentence lightly but from start to finish I was engrossed in Imani Perry's "Looking for Lorraine. The Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry". Based on archival material (some of which has only been available since 2010), Hansberry's published writing, and loads of contextual matter, Perry paints a portrait of the playwright (best known for "Raisin in the Sun"...

This relatively short biography provides a great deal of information about Lorraine Hansberry's life--the facts of her family and childhood, her activism, her writings, her impact on other writers and artists, her commitment to the black community.The writing is very good, although despite its length I felt that some sections dragged but overall it presented a powerful and moving portrait of this great writer who is underappreciated. Of course her greatest work, A Raisin in the Sun continues to

I’m not sure how to divvy up the blame between the author and the audio narrator, but this was just mind numbingly boring despite its biographical subject herself being so important and so darn interesting! I woke up at the 33% mark long enough to bail.

SUPERB!!As folks are now saying, Imani Perry "understood the assignment." Her critical skills--of bringing Hansberry to life and to a place in history and the arts--are impeccable.I knew very little about Hansberry other than her genious of a play "Raisin in the Sun." Her relationships, love life, political morality, family connections, loneliness, depression, place in history are all explored with a deft pen and detailed research.Perry's objectivity is coupled with writing that is so moving tha...

Well worth a view or listen. She's influenced me as I write, as I love, and as I live.

I love reading biographies of artists, intellectuals, activists and Lorraine was all three. This book was so beautifully written and I learned a lot.

This is a very thorough, meticulously researched and comprehensive biography of Lorraine Hansberry and I found it both interesting and illuminating. But it is also verges on the memoir (which the author acknowledges) of someone who obviously has enormous admiration and affection for Hansberry. So much so that the book felt too much like a hagiography, and for me the writing was overly subjective. Nothing really wrong with that essentially, but I prefer my biographies to show more of a balanced a...

Lorraine Hansberry is so underrated. And it makes me so mad. Her famous play A Raisin in the Sun is brilliant (definitely a recommendation to anyone who hasn't read/ seen it yet) but she was such an important figure of her time, I'm genuinely surprised that she has been forgotten. Only few biographers have taken on the task of documenting her life. Luckily for us, Imani Perry was one of them. Instead of option for a conventional biography, she chose to write a "third person memoir", which allowe...

Through the years I’ve heard about the activism and radicalism of Lorraine Hansberry, but never was there a book-length treatment of said activism. Well, thanks to Imani Perry’s careful, caring, love-filled and yes, a radiant piece of scholarship that void has now been brilliantly filled. Imani Perry refers to this work as, “less a biography than a genre yet to be named—maybe third person memoir—” and sets a course that will illuminate Lorraine’s life while avoiding the easy path of rumor and BS...