Signifyin(g) when vexed: Black feminist revision, Anger, and A Raisin in the sun

Abstract

Lorraine Hansberry invoked Britain's "Angry Young Men" on multiple occasions in order to explain to her contemporaries the black rage she was attempting to express with A Raisin in the Sun. Walter Lee Younger, the husband and businessman struggling to attain his version of the American dream by opening a liquor store, is widely regarded as the "Angry Young Man" of Hansberry's play; however, this article proposes that, to account fully for Raisin's engagement with the "Angry," scholarship must look more closely at his sister Beneatha Younger, who appears as a black feminist revision of the "Angry Young Man" trope. By appearing to mimic Walter's anger and then refashioning it throughout the play, Beneatha undermines Walter by Signifyin(g) on him, in the spirit of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s theorization of this term. Most importantly, Beneatha's playful, Signifyin(g) anger enables us to re-evaluate the longstanding assumption that Raisin constitutes a staid example of kitchen-sink realism.