A Raisin in The Sun, Did you watch??

In a stellar cast, ABC presents, A Raisin in the Sun,



I did not watch the premiere tonight but I did record it for viewing tomorrow. Now, I must explain my love of The Raisin in the Sun with you. I read this book by Loraine Hansberry, the year of 93 or 94 ish, my sophomore year of college at Jackson State University. Now let me give you a little background, in junior high school my English teacher saw fit to have me enrolled in Advanced placement classes that consisted of a group of students that only read and studied poetry. I had no idea, that these classes were for a select group of students that they felt had potential to excel in American literature courses. I was enrolled in these classes up until my senior year in high school and actually did very well in them. We read everything from poetry and novels from every period of time that you could think of. We didn't have the standard grammar, spelling and sentence structure books that other English classes had, we did strictly literature and writing. The basics were expected to be learned on your own time.

So with this being said by the time I got to college,I knew how to write a paper that was college level. Anyway back to my story, my assignment was to read, A Raisin in the Sun by the late Lorraine Hansberry and interpret its meaning,give a literary synopsis of the book and how it relates to the issues that were being faced by African Americans in today's society.

I worked extremely hard in completing a paper that I was very proud of and thought in the very least I would receive a "B" for my effort. I didn't think it was my best work, I could have put a lot more effort in it had I tried, but hey the assignment was complete.

So on the day that we were to receive our graded papers back, mine was handed to me with the grade of a "F" with the word, plagiarism, copied from another source. Can you imagine the shock on my face, that I was being accused of plagiarism for my own work? This was a paper that I had to challenge a college professor to get the grade, I felt I deserved. I mean come on, All I wanted was a "B", at that time I was just glad it was over. I had to prove up my sources were correctly cited and that the words that I had submitted were my own. Well to make a long story short, I received a "A" for the paper an apology from the professor and a note indicating that my paper was one of the best she had read in her career.

That was better than I could have hoped for, and luckily on this assignment I had actually done the work myself( ya'll know college students don't always do their own work). So my point is, A Raisin in the Sun has a special place in my heart, and will always be one of my favorite books.


So if you haven't read the book, I highly suggest that you do. Although the book was written in 1959, you'd be surprised to draw so many similarities in today's' society. Lorraine Hansberry was definitely ahead of her time and this is a timeless piece, that should be shared with generations to come, because for some reason we've forgotten where we were such a short time ago.

Get the book people, oh and that clip that I saw when Phylicia Rashaad breaks it down for Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs, baby is classic. Genius.


Signing off,
MochaMom