Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays: The Drinking Gourd/What Use Are Flowers? [Paperback]

Lorraine Hansberry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 13, 1994

Here are Lorraine Hansberry's last three plays--Les Blancs, The Drinking Gourd, and What Use Are Flowers?--representing the capstone of her achievement. Includes a new preface by Jewell Gresham Nemiroff and a revised introduction by Margaret B. Wilkerson.

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Here are Lorraine Hansberry's last three plays--Les Blancs, The Drinking Gourd, and What Use Are Flowers?--representing the capstone of her achievement. Includes a new preface by Jewell Gresham Nemiroff and a revised introduction by Margaret B. Wilkerson.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (December 13, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679755322
• ISBN-13: 978-0679755326
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #220,842 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Much more powerful than Raisin in the Sun, August 29, 2009

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Leland Traiman - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays: The Drinking Gourd/What Use Are Flowers? (Paperback)

Lorraine Hansberry is best remembered for "Raisin in the Sun" which, even today, many feel is a strong statement against racism. However, "Raisin" pales in comparison to "Les Blancs", a much more militant and radical statement which, I have not doubt, must have genuinely frightened the liberal establishment in the 1960's. This play was decades ahead of it's time and it is no wonder that the more comfortable "Raisin" is what Ms Hansberry is mostly remembered for. Anyone who knows both of these works will realize that the world lost a great treasure when cancer stole this brilliant African-American lesbian's life from us when she was just 34. (Although Ms. Hansberry, married a white Jewish man, Robert Nemiroff in 1953, the couple separated in 1957 and divorced in 1964. She wrote some articles for "The Ladder", the first lesbian periodical in the United States, in the late 1950's.)