Connecting Your Dreams

Set in Chicago in the 1950s, A Raisin in the Sun is about the members of the Younger family, an African American family, who each have big dreams of what to do with the life insurance money they will soon receive from Big Walter’s passing. Engage students with premade activities and lessons from Storyboard That!

In the two poems “Dreams” and "Harlem" (A Dream Deferred), Hughes focuses on the common dreams of African Americans in the early 1900s – the same dream that Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks of in his “I Have A Dream” speech: true equality. In “Dreams”, Hughes examines the theme of the importance of not letting go of dreams, because without dreams, life is empty and broken. In "Harlem" (A Dream Deferred), Hughes examines the important question of what happens when dreams get put off: do they become more powerful, as the struggle for equality did with each passing year? While Hughes wrote from a uniquely African American perspective, his poems about dreams are relatable to every American who has pursued their own American dreams.