At the beginning of the play, A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry uses Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem” as inspiration. Hughes wrote:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
(“Harlem” in The Collected Works of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes, Harold Ober Associates, Inc., 2002.)
God of mercy and compassion, in the midst of far too many broken and deferred dreams, we ask for Your grace and courage to face the injustices of our time with integrity of word and deed, for the sake of the common good and the future of our society. We ask this in Your name.—AMEN.
