Review: WHAT I MUST TELL THE WORLD

What a heartwrenching, heartwarming, inspiring short biography! The author manages to vividly elucidate American racism of the 1930's through 1950's, showing it against the background of systemic racism via its effect on a specific family, and later, on several Black adults in Harlem.

The book is also educational: although I knew of Lorraine Hansberry's fame for her classic play "A Raisin in the Sun," (the title taken from a poignant line in Harlem poet Langston Hughes' oeuvre), I knew nothing of her life, orientation, or struggles, so I'm very gratified to have come upon and read this title. I think this book should be widely read.

Ms. Hansberry was a noted and notable playwright and a close friend of those in the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes [poet] and James Baldwin [author, journalist, keen observer of culture]. That period was a highlight of American American culture in the sense of the arts; but a deep blot in the sense of the ingrained systemic racism.