Examining Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun as Counternarrative
Examining Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun as Counternarrative: Understanding the Black Family and Black Students shows how and why Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, should be used as a teaching tool to help educators develop a more accurate and authentic understanding of the Black Family.
The purpose of this book is to help educators develop a greater awareness of Black children and youth’s, humanity, academic potential and learning capacity, and for teachers to develop the consciousness to disavow white supremacy, American exceptionalism, myths, racial innocence, and personal absolution within the education system. This counternarrative responds to the flawed and racist perceptions, stereotypes, and tropes that are perpetuated in schools and society about the African American family and Black students in US schools. It is deliberative and reverberating in addressing anti-Black racism. It argues that, if Education is to be reimagined through a social justice structure, teachers must be educated with works that include Black artists and educators, and teachers must be committed to decolonizing their own minds.
Examining Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun as Counternarrative: Understanding the Black Family and Black Students is important reading for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Educational Foundations, Curriculum and Instruction, Education Policy, Multicultural Education, Social Justice Education, and Black Studies. It will also be beneficial reading for in-service educators.
Carl A. Grant is Hoefs-Bascom Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and former Chair of the Afro American Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. He has authored or edited more than fifty books. Professor Grant's recent books includes James Baldwin and The American Schoolhouse (2021); Du Bois and Education (2018) and Black Intellectual Thought in Education, (Sept. 2015) Routledge (with Keffrelyn and Anthony Brown); and The Moment: Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright and the Firestorm at Trinity United Church of Christ (with Shelby Grant) 2013, Rowman & Littlefield.