Introduction
This unit will be focused on the novel Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Patillo Beals, and the play “A Raisin in the Sun” written by Lorraine Hansberry. Both texts take place during the same decade of history; each author uses the setting of the 1950s and 1960s to reveal the realities Black families, men, women, and children lived during the violent Civil Rights Era. After reading “A Raisin in the Sun”, students are challenged to determine what the American Dream does or does not mean to them personally. After reading, Warriors Don’t Cry, students are challenged to define what it means to be a warrior, interview a person they consider to be a warrior, and create a report on the person. Historically when this unit is taught, DCPS teachers ask students to compare the ambitions and motivations of the main characters to their own ambitions and motivations without appropriately contextualizing the environments through which each character develops their senses of success. Most importantly, the unit has been taught in a way that ignores more prevalent and realistic themes around gentrification, redlining, Black schooling, educational inequity, systemic racism, institutional violence, and oppression that the main characters of each build through their experiences in the text. The unit typically focuses on the literary elements of each text but ignores each author’s political purposes in writing each text.
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