Les Blancs

Despite this early, extraordinary fame and her remarkable life and work, Lorraine Hansberry is largely forgotten today. As part of our programmatic expansion of the canon, we are devoting ourselves to Hansberry’s last drama.

In a fictional African country, the brothers Tshembe and Abioseh meet again after a long separation and, following the death of their father, are forced not only to come to terms with their own family history, but also to take a very concrete stance on the colonial occupation of their homeland by “the whites” (Les Blancs). The drama shows that the line is not only drawn between the different skin colors, but is also a question of attitude and character. In addition to masterful dialog and complex character sketches, Hansberry succeeds in cleverly analyzing colonial power relations, including their subtle mechanisms of justification and repression.