A new historicist analysis of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro

Abstract

This paper examines Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro in the light of the New Historicists’ literary criticism. Our choice of these texts is informed by the fact that these African-American female playwrights appropriate the historicity of racism which navigates into other discourses such as politics, religion, social and cultural habits, thereby, influencing human society in a variety of ways. Specifically, these literary texts are interrogated along the lines of the overall effects of social tensions on the African-American personality throughout a racist American society. Our finding reveals that the American society is responsible for those conditions that constitute the harsh realities of the African-American experience in America.