ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a close-up introduction of Lorraine from her early days in Chicago to her time at the University Wisconsin-Madison, to her move to New York. The universal drama, Raisin, can help European American teachers to understand, to paraphrase Baldwin, the extent to which poverty wears a color and arrives with an attitude. Teachers may ponder that Lorraine’s work is the work of only one – exceptional and gifted – African American, and they have other African Americans students, along with Latinx, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Hmong, and students from Muslim countries in their class. Some European American colleagues professed surprise and innocence about the overarching and sophistication of racist acts; some explained that it was informative seeing racism acted out in ways they had only read about. Some spoke about how the staging, the actions on stage made discussion of race, poverty and gender within the play more believable.
