... sparkling ... Shields has carefully sifted through not only Hansberry’s play scripts but a wide array of her personal correspondence, allowing him to focus attention on aspects of the playwright’s life analyzed less rigorously in previous scholarship. The biographer’s framing of Hansberry’s life history within its historical context is one of the strongest features of the book ... One of the most brilliant aspects of Shields’s study is its nuance, a tone that is possible primarily because of the author’s willingness to grapple with the inconsistencies and even contradictions he finds threaded through his subject’s life.

... an evenhanded and informative study that reveals truths about a woman whose complexities were largely erased from the public portrait she and her heirs fashioned ... Shields has not written a glitzy showbiz biography that takes readers behind the scenes of the theater world. In fact, the triumph of A Raisin in the Sun only takes up a couple of chapters near the end of the book, and Hansberry and the team that mounted the show—including her cheerleader husband, Bob Nemiroff—were Broadway outsiders. Instead, the story Shields tells is of a smart, reserved and gifted young woman from the Black upper class who applied her intelligence, and sometimes anger, to a quest for her authentic personal identity in midcentury America ... To paint the full landscape of the time and place that Hansberry inhabited, Shields often detours from the writer’s immediate story to place the many supporting players in context. These side trips are generally informative, although some seem extraneous and interrupt the flow of the main narrative. Shields raises interesting questions about others’ contributions to Hansberry’s work, but the answers remain largely unexplored. Overall, this equitable portrait of Hansberry is thoughtful and deftly rendered, a welcome corrective for the carefully curated and sanitized version that has long constituted fans’ received wisdom.

Shields follows the young playwright on her many journeys, from Chicago to Madison to Harlem to Greenwich Village and the Broadway stage. He convincingly argues that if Hansberry had not died at 34 in 1965 of pancreatic cancer, she would have been an 'elder spokesperson' in the LGBTQ and Black Lives Matter movements. He situates Hansberry among her contemporaries and traces her development as an artist and as a person, drawing on her private correspondence, her personal notes, and drafts of unpublished works. He also offers a rich chronicle of life on the South Side of Chicago, including background to the 1940 legal case, Hansberry v. Lee, that inspired her famous play, and describes her relationships with fellow artists. All who admire or are curious about Hansberry will cherish this bracing and fascinating analysis of a life cut short.

... an excellent account of Hansberry’s life ... Shields provides interesting background describing the Chicago and New York Hansberry would have known. His account of the development and marketing of A Raisin in the Sun is particularly noteworthy. Shields also reveals the name of a patron who helped fund the play’s production; until this biography, he had remained anonymous ... This biography substantiates Hansberry’s accomplishments, despite her short life. Recommended for all Hansberry enthusiasts and 20th-century literary scholars.

... offers general readers a well-researched account of Hansberry’s life and conscientious summaries of her literary and political work ... Making good use of private papers as well as published materials, Shields paints an evocative portrait of Hansberry’s childhood in Chicago ... When it comes to her personal and emotional life, however, Shields is regrettably hands-off ... Given her subsequent marriage to Marxist activist Robert Nemiroff and later lesbian affairs, this moment cries out for consideration of Hansberry’s complicated sexuality. Instead, Shields jumps to the fact that she met the 'wonderful young man' through a left-wing group supporting Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry Wallace ... Shields’s capable account of her journalism reminds us just how radical Hansberry was ... Shields presents provocative source material without offering much in the way of analysis. He describes as 'indulgent' an excerpt from a letter by Nemiroff urging Hansberry to stick to her writing, advice that might well strike other readers, especially female readers, as patronizing and controlling ... The chapters on A Raisin in the Sun are Shields’s best, detailing an engrossing narrative of the creation and production of an American classic. Later chapters that chronicle Hansberry’s declining health and difficulties with later plays are also compelling. But Shields dodges the question voiced by several of how extensively Nemiroff revised Hansberry’s work when she was dying and after her death ... Rich in detail if short on commentary, Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind a Raisin in the Sun fills a niche on the growing shelf of books devoted to her by offering a solid introduction to this important American artist and social critic.

Drawing on meticulously researched sources, including previously unpublished interviews and private correspondence, Shields offers an illuminating portrait of Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) and her tragically brief but formidable career. Shields, author of biographies of Kurt Vonnegut and Harper Lee, deftly sets the particularities of Hansberry’s life against a backdrop of relevant themes ... Moreover, Shields skillfully locates Hansberry’s evolving ideology within contemporary literary and political movements ... The book’s subtitle ultimately delivers on its promise, as the author provides a fascinating view of the personal and cultural forces informing Hansberry’s dramatic masterpiece, A Raisin in the Sun ... A revealing and rewarding biography documenting the life, work, and historical relevance of a great American author.

... well-researched if knotty ... Shields, however, can come across as dismissive of his subject, as when he repeatedly trots out (and dwells on) the question of whether Hansberry actually wrote Raisin, but doesn’t hazard an answer since 'the original manuscript was lost.' It’s a fine introduction to Hansberry’s world, but readers may be left wanting.