Had Gwendolyn Brooks and Lorraine Hansberry ever met, they would have had much to discuss. Both Chicago natives, whose insightful, moving works captured the reality of being a Black woman in mid-century America, Brooks and Hansberry also shared membership in what the literary historian Lawrence P. Jackson has dubbed the “Indignant Generation” of black writers whose voices shaped the crucial period between the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights era. Though the two never did meet, Chicago’s Indignant Women Collective, the playwriting collaboration of Tina Jenkins Bell, Sandra Jackson-Opoku and Janice Tuck Lively, have envisioned such a conversation, by creating an imagined dialogue in which the two artists discuss topics ranging from marriage and sexuality to politics. It will be performed by Emily Hooper Lansana and Zahra Glenda Baker from In the Spirit, with Gregory Hicks narrating. The performance will be preceded by a conversation with poet Angela Jackson and Princeton professor Imani Perry, authors of biographies of Brooks and Hansberry, respectively. They will discuss the powerful lives and legacies of these celebrated writers.

DRAMATIC READING

Emily Hooper Lansana (In the Spirit) | Lorraine Hansberry

Zahra Baker (In the Spirit) | Gwendolyn Brooks

Gregory Hicks | Narrator

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This program is presented in partnership with the Poetry Foundation and Indignant Women Collective.

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