Women’s Studies, 39:451–469, 2010 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0049-7878 print / 1547-7045 online DOI: 10.1080/00497878.2010.484330 451 GWST 0049-7878 1547-7045 Women’s Studies, Vol. 39, No. 5, May 2010: pp. 0–0 Women’s Studies LORRAINE HANSBERRY: DEFINING THE LINE BETWEEN INTEGRATION AND ASSIMILATION The Line Between Integration and Assimilation Yomna Saber YOMNA SABER Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt The 1950s was a vibrant decade for African American writers, among whom the name of Lorraine Hansberry will always be remembered. In his evaluation of the American theater in the twentieth century, Alan Ackerman looks back at the 1950s as a time that “witnessed . . . a period of dramatic canon formation (the late Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Lorraine Hansberry, Edward Albee)” (765). The decade opened with black critics urging African American writers to broaden their literary horizons in order to reach the universality of works written by other American writers. Although Hugh Gloster claimed in his 1950 essay “Race and the Negro Writer” that the African American author should not abandon his ethnic character, he strongly advocated complete integration into the larger Amer- ican literary tradition. He attacked what he identified as an “obsession with race” that had long stood in the way of African American writing in major ways (369). He called for the transcen- dence of the ”colour line,“ claiming that this was actually achieved in Ann Petry’s The Street (1946), Willard Motley’s Knock on Any Door (1947), Zora Neale Hurston’s Seraph on the Suwanee (1948), and Gwendolyn Brooks’s Annie Allen (1949). A similar plea for an unmitigated African American integra- tion was raised in Saunders Redding’s essay “The Negro Writer— Shadow and Substance.” Redding condemned the same Jim Crow aesthetic fetters that further imprisoned African American writing in the 1920s and 1930s in the lure of ”imitativeness,“ ”dialect,“ and the ”naughty peep-show.“ Clinging to ethnic roots and seeing life through a racial lens was less and less attractive as African American writers introduced themselves to ”realistic idealism” and ”scientific Address correspondence to Yomna Saber, Faculty of Al Alsun (Languages), Ain Shams University, 1 Rashdan Street, Dokki 12311, Cairo, Egypt. E-mail: aaxys@nottingham.ac.uk