Abstract

The earliest date ascribed to the manuscript of Lorraine Hansberry’s posthumously published play What Use Are Flowers? is December 19, 1961. However, there is no conclusive evidence showing when Hansberry first conceived the idea of what became Flowers, a play about child survivors of an unnamed (but obviously) nuclear holocaust. Yet, given the context of President John F. Kennedy’s speech during the Berlin Crisis, which became a flashpoint for the national debate on nuclear war, shelters, and the survivability of the ideas of home and family, attributing it to 1961 would be unsurprising. In Flowers, an aging hermit, the only remaining adult survivor, plays the role of father and teacher, creating the simulacrum of a patriarchal family without a woman (mother) to care for the children of postapocalyptic Earth. Through readings of Flowers and its precursor text “Gedachtnis,” both of which feature the female child survivor named after a wild plant that is neither edible nor useful to human survival, I examine the question of girlhood and its human–plant conditions as a contested terrain through which patriarchy is both nurtured and challenged. What ultimately explodes in Flowers may not be a technological atomic bomb, but rather a nuclear device in human history, which has been fueling sustainable, renewable energy in a male-dominated world, namely, girls’ use by, and value to, men.

Keywords: Lorraine Hansberry, What Use Are Flowers?, Berlin Crisis, postapocalyptic Earth, nurturing, women, girls

How to Cite:

Taketani, E., (2024) “Girlhood in What Use Are Flowers?: Lorraine Hansberry, the Postapocalyptic Earth, Nurturing”, the Black Theatre Review 3(1), 1-16. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/tbtr.6010