Lorraine Hansberry
African American playwright (A Raisin in the Sun, 1959) who attacked Mailer's two-part Village Voice review of Jean Genet's The Blacks (61.6) in a Voice essay on 1 June 1961; Mailer's reply ('Mailer to Hansberry,' 61.7) ran a week later, on 8 June.
Hansberry attacked Mailer’s two-part Village Voice review of Genet‘s The Blacks (61.6) in a Voice essay on 1 June 1961, charging Mailer with romanticizing the racial politics of his hipster essay “The White Negro” (57.1). Mailer answered the next week (61.7) — a sharp exchange registered in the Voice itself rather than reprinted in the books, and a useful early marker of the racial-politics fault-lines around Mailer.
Stub; to be expanded as the Hansberry exchange’s later reception is added.