For some time now-I think since I was a child-I have been possessed of the desire to put down the stuff of my life. That is a commonplace impulse, apparently, among persons of massive self-interest; sooner or later we all do it. And, I am quite certain, there is only one internal quarrel: how much of the truth to tell? How much, how much, how much! It is brutal, in sober uncompromising moments, to reflect on the comedy of concern we all enact when it comes to our precious images! — Lorraine Hansberry [1]
Written in 1960, this Like / Hate list documents Lorraine’s feelings on everything from her husband (a ‘like,’ most of the time) to racism and people who defend it (hate) to Eartha Kitt (like) to sneaky love affairs (hate). Notably, “homosexuality” makes both the like and hate list, capturing the joy, exhaustion, pleasure, and frustration of being a Black lesbian in mid-century America.[2]
I LIKE
- Mahalia Jackson’s music
- My husband–most of the time getting dressed up
- being admired for my looks
- Dorothy Secules eyes
- Dorothy Secules
- Shakespeare
- Having an appetite
- Slacks
- My homosexuality
- Being alone
- Eartha Kitt’s looks
- Eartha Kitt
- That first drink of Scotch
- To feel like working
- The little boy in “400 Blows”
- The way I look
- Certain flowers
- The way Dorothy Talks
- Older Women
- Miranda D’Corona’s accent
- Charming women
- And/or intelligent women
I HATE
- Being asked to speak
- Speaking
- Too much mail
- My loneliness
- My homosexuality
- Stupidity
- Most television programs
- What has happened to
- Sidney Poitier
- Racism
- People who defend it
- Seeing my picture
- Reading my interviews
- Jean Genet’s plays
- Jean Paul Sartre’s writing
- Not being able to work
- Death
- Pain
- Cramps
- Being hung over
- Silly women
- As silly men
- David Suskind’s pretensions
- Sneaky love affairs
On the back of the paper, Lorraine wrote two additional lists — “I Am Bored to Death With” (which includes A Raisin in the Sun and Lesbians, the capital L variety) and “I Want,” which features Dorothy Secules (“at the moment”), one of her lovers after Molly[3].
While being alone is a like, loneliness is a hate — Lorraine wrote often of her intense loneliness. A collection of her writing, To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, features a. journal entry in which she contemplates being alone:
Worst of all, I am ashamed of being alone. Or is it my loneliness that I am ashamed of? I have closed the shutters so that no one can see. Me. Alone. Sitting at the typewriter on Easter Eve; brooding; alone. Upstairs I will keep the drapes drawn. No one must know these hurts. Why? I shall wash my hair. It is helping my skin. I shall be beautiful this time next year: long hair and clear skin. And I shall still be lonely.[4]
Elsewhere, she muses that, “Eventually it comes to you: the thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.”[5]
Her like list is saturated with another of her obsessions: beauty. Her own, other women’s, the world’s. Lorraine once wrote that, “I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and — I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations and generations.”[6]
[1] Nemiroff, Robert, and Lorraine Hansberry. To Be Young, Gifted and Black: A Portrait of Lorraine Hansberry, in Her Own Words. Samuel French, 2021.
[2] Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust, https://www.lhlt.org/schomburg-center-lorraine-hansberry-papers.
[3] Perry, Imani. Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry. Beacon, 2019.
[4] Nemiroff, Robert, and Lorraine Hansberry. To Be Young, Gifted and Black: A Portrait of Lorraine Hansberry, in Her Own Words. Samuel French, 2021.
[5] Nemiroff, Robert, and Lorraine Hansberry. To Be Young, Gifted and Black: A Portrait of Lorraine Hansberry, in Her Own Words. Samuel French, 2021.
[6] Nemiroff, Robert, and Lorraine Hansberry. To Be Young, Gifted and Black: A Portrait of Lorraine Hansberry, in Her Own Words. Samuel French, 2021.