Beneatha's Story

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This is my third and final action project for my humanities class called Drama. In this class we read plays and look at the historical context and what we can learn from them. In this unit we read A Raisin In The Sun. While reading it we learned about the different forms of racial inequality that were going on at the time, specifically the housing crisis.For this action project we had to write a prologue addressing a scene in the play and give our opinion on the story as well as the opinions of the people that we interviewed in the external part of the unit. I chose to address the scene between the character Beneatha Younger and Asagai. Asagai is an exchange student from Nigeria who goes to school with Beneatha. In the scene Beneatha is trying to talk to Asagai about his culture and learn about it from his perspective. Instead of answering her questions he dismisses her as an appropriator. I disagree with his opinion so that is why I chose to write about that. We also had to take a part of the scene we chose and add a chorus. My chorus gave a voice to a more modern perspective on what he is saying to her.

Prologue:
Beneatha Younger is a young black woman looking for her identity in a world that refuses to help her in any way.
Beneatha lives in a world that claims to be liberated, modern and new
Beneatha lives in a world that is truly apathetic, bias, and cold.
Beneatha is surrounded by people with stale and stagnant dreams.

Beneatha looks to her future undauntedly.
Aspiring to become to help and heal.
She knows she is going to be a doctor, no matter what she is told.

Beneatha looks to her present unwaveringly.
What she can do with what she has been given and with what she had worked for.
She fights for her right to an education.

Beneatha looks to her past unshakably.
Where she was raised, gleaming everything she can from her roots.
She wants to learn about her ancestors and their culture.

Beneatha is a woman who hungers to learn.
Learning liberates, knowledge sets free, how could it possibly be wrong?
Beneatha is seeking out those with firsthand knowledge and experience to teach her.
In looking to learn about her culture she met Asagai, a man with firsthand knowledge and experience.
He could have helped her, taught her what she couldn’t have learned anywhere else.

Asagai dismisses her as an appropriator, as an assimilator.
To appropriate is to steal and display it as your own.
To assimilator is to absorb and not question.
Beneatha wants to be neither.
Asagai patronizes, coddles, and condescends, thinking her spoiled.
Perhaps if he had taught instead of demeaning her she would know more than stereotypes and surface level concepts.

Beneatha is not some privileged white girl who claims to be ‘cultured’ because she read a book once.
She isn’t looking to brag about being ‘cultured’, she is looking to be educated.
She is looking for a place where she will not be questioned or snubbed for the color of her skin.
Beneatha is a woman who wants know herself.

 Chorus:

ASAGAI  ( Laughing aloud at her seriousness ) Oh ... please! I am only teasing you because how you are so very serious about these things. ( He stands back from her and folds his arms across his chest as he watches her pulling at her hair and frowning in the mirror ) Do you remember the first time you met me at school? ... ( He laughs ) You came up to me and you said—and I thought you were the most serious little thing I had ever seen—you said: ( He imitates her ) “Mr. Asagai—I want very much to talk with you. About Africa. You see, Mr. Asagai, I am looking for my  identity !” ( He laughs )

CHORUS  She comes to you with question and curiosity, with no ill intent, yet you judge

BENEATHA  ( Turning to him, not laughing ) Yes— ( Her face is quizzical, profoundly disturbed )

ASAGAI  ( Still teasing and reaching out and taking her face in his hands and turning her profile to him ) Well ... it is true  that  this  is  not  so  much  a  profile  of  a  Hollywood queen  as  perhaps  a  queen  of  the  Nile—( A  mock dismissal of the importance of the question ) But what does  it  matter? Assimilationism  is  so  popular  in  your country.

CHORUS She doesn't wish take what isn’t hers, she wants to learn and grow

BENEATHA  ( Wheeling, passionately, sharply ) I am not an assimilationist!

CHORUS  To assimilate is to absorb and become what is not yours. This is most definitely not assimilation.

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