Episode 7: Quentin Vennie

Lorraine Hansberry’s seminal play A Raisin in the Sun follows the story of the Youngers, a black family facing the harsh reality of life in mid-twentieth-century America, as racism pervades their uncomfortably crowded and rundown two-bedroom apartment on the south side of Chicago. The play is littered with dreams that can’t/won’t come true because of systemic racism, bad investments and the reality of black life in America. Though the play debuted on Broadway in 1959, its prevailing question remains painfully true today for black Americans:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore – 

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over – 

Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

-Langston Hughes, Harlem

My conversation with Quentin Vennie brought Hansberry’s play and Hughes’ poem to the forefront of my thoughts. Too often today black neighborhoods are graveyards for exploded dreams as drug addiction, poverty and low expectations take root in the people and institutions of the neighborhood. In most of the world’s eyes, the souls who live in these food deserts, healthcare deserts, and educational deserts are merely statistics, not three-dimensional people with deep, real and valuable humanity. And still what remains, as Quentin details in his memoir Strong in the Broken Places, is the love of the people in the community for each other. 

Maya Angelou said when you learn you teach. And through his harrowing story of overcoming a prescription drug addiction and a suicide attempt in order to step into his destiny as father, healer and teacher, Quentin uses his life as a classroom. His lessons are weighty. God has a bigger plan for your life than what you can see in your current circumstances. Prayer works and prayer requires work. Surrendering is not weakness, but a necessary step of faith. And quite simply, you have to choose life.