Richard Wright (1) (1908–1960)
Author of Native Son
For other authors named Richard Wright, see the disambiguation page.
About the Author
Richard Wright was generally thought of as one of the most gifted contemporary African American writers until the rise of James Baldwin. "With Wright, the pain of being a Negro is basically economic---its sight is mainly in the pocket. With Baldwin, the pain suffuses the whole man. . . . If show more Baldwin's sights are higher than Wright's, it is in part because Wright helped to raise them" (Time). Wright was born on a plantation near Natchez, Mississippi, the son of a sharecropper. At the age of 15, he started to work in Memphis, then in Chicago, then "bummed all over the country," supporting himself by various odd jobs. His early writing was in the smaller magazines---first poetry, then prose. He won Story Story's $500 prize---for the best story written by a worker on the Writer's Project---with "Uncle Tom's Children" in 1938, his first important publication. He wrote Native Son (1940) in eight months, and it made his reputation. Based in part on the actual case of a young black murderer of a white woman, it was one of the first of the African American protest novels, violent and shocking in its scenes of cruelty, hunger, rape, murder, flight, and prison. Black Boy (1945) is the simple, vivid, and poignant story of Wright's early years in the South. It appeared at the beginning of a new postwar awareness of the evils of racial prejudice and did much to call attention to the plight of the African American. The Outsider (1953) is a novel based on Wright's own experience as a member of the Communist party, an affiliation he terminated in 1944. He remained politically inactive thereafter and from 1946 until his death made his principal residence in Paris. His nonfiction writings on problems of his race include Black Power: A Record of Reactions in a Land of Pathos (1954), about a visit to the Gold Coast, White Man, Listen (1957), and Twelve Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States. (Bowker Author Biography) Richard Wright was born on a plantation near Natchez, Mississippi. His father left the family when Wright was only five years old, and he was raised first by his mother and then by a series of relatives. What little schooling he had ended with his graduation from ninth grade in Memphis, Tennessee. At age 15, he started to work in Memphis, and later worked in Chicago before traveling across the country supporting himself with odd jobs. When Wright finally returned to Chicago, he got a job with the federal Writer's Project, a government-supported arts program. He was quite successful, winning a $500 prize from a magazine for the best fiction written by a participant in that program. In Chicago, he was also introduced to leftist politics and became a member of the Communist Party. In 1937, Wright left Chicago for New York, where he became Harlem editor for the Communist national newspaper, The Daily Worker, and where he met future novelist, Ralph Ellison. Wright became a celebrated author with the publication of Native Son (1940), a novel he wrote in only eight months. Based on the actual case of a young black murderer of a white woman, it was one of the first of the modern black protest novels, violent and shocking in its sense of cruelty, hunger, rape, murder, flight, and prison. This novel brought Wright both fame and financial security. He followed it with his autobiography, Black Boy (1945), which was also successful. In 1942, Wright and his wife broke with the Communist Party, and in 1947, they moved to France, where Wright lived the rest of his life. His novel The Outsider (1953) is based on his experiences as a member of the Communist Party. Wright is regarded as a major modern American writer, one of the first black writers to reach a large white audience, and thereby raise the level of national awareness of the continuing problem of racism in America. In many respects Wright paved the way for all black writers who followed him. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Richard Wright (1908-1960)
Photograph by Gordon Parks, May 1943
(Farm Security Administration-
Office of War Information Photograph Collection,
Library of Congress)
Photograph by Gordon Parks, May 1943
(Farm Security Administration-
Office of War Information Photograph Collection,
Library of Congress)
Works by Richard Wright
Black Power: Three Books from Exile: Black Power; The Color Curtain; and White Man, Listen! (2008) 85 copies
The Man Who Was Almost a Man 4 copies
Down by the Riverside 4 copies
How "Bigger" was born; the story of Native son, one of the most significant novels of our time 3 copies
Wright Richard 1 copy
Fire and cloud 1 copy
Associated Works
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (1995) — Contributor, some editions — 902 copies
Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study (1992) — Contributor, some editions — 505 copies
American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume Two: E. E. Cummings to May Swenson (2000) — Contributor — 395 copies
From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas 1900-2002 (2002) — Contributor — 171 copies
The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1899-1967: The Classic Anthology (1967) — Contributor — 170 copies
Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (1962) — Introduction, some editions — 159 copies
Growing Up in the South: An Anthology of Modern Southern Literature (1991) — Contributor — 138 copies
An American Album: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Harper's Magazine (2000) — Contributor — 129 copies
Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of Lesbian and Gay Fiction by African-American Writers (1996) — Contributor — 88 copies
Bearing Witness: Selections from African-American Autobiography in the Twentieth Century (1991) — Contributor — 66 copies
Buzz Words: Poems About Insects (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series) (2021) — Contributor — 29 copies
Fifty Years of the American Short Story from the O. Henry Awards 1919-1970 (1970) — Contributor — 13 copies
Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, Volume I (1962) — Introduction, some editions — 10 copies
The Best Short Stories of 1941 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story (1941) — Contributor — 10 copies
The Best Short Stories of 1939 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story (1939) — Contributor — 6 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Wright, Richard
- Legal name
- Wright, Richard Nathaniel
- Birthdate
- 1908-09-04
- Date of death
- 1960-11-28
- Burial location
- Le Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- USA (birth)
France (naturalized 1947) - Birthplace
- Roxie, Mississippi, USA
- Place of death
- Paris, France
- Cause of death
- heart attack
- Places of residence
- Jackson, Mississippi, USA
Chicago, Illinois, USA
New York, New York, USA
Paris, France - Education
- Lanier High School, Jackson, Mississippi, USA
- Occupations
- novelist
short-story writer
poet
essayist
editor
postal clerk - Organizations
- John Reed Club
Communist Party
National Negro Congress
South Side Writers Group (chairman)
Left Front (editor)
Daily Worker (editor) (show all 7)
Works Progress Administration Federal Writers' Project - Awards and honors
- Spingarn Medal (1941)
Guggenheim Fellowship
Chicago Literary Hall of Fame (2010)
Story Prize (1938)
Members
Reviews
I read this to go along with a free online course (The American Novel since 1945). With that in mind, I guess the most immediate question I had was "What does an autobiography have to do with novels?" Well, it turns out that Wright wrote dramatic scenes with sharply written dialogue. While events do follow his own life, he apparently used incidents that happened to people he knew as readily as he used those that happened to himself. We can see from the end of the book, when he was involved with the Communist Party, that he was growing more concerned with expressing the feeling of being a black southerner. The first half of Black Boy succeeded in that.
The second part was quite different. Based on other books I have read, I thought his view of the North was a bit idealistic. Maybe the silly and grating inter-politics of the Communist Party's artist clubs made a more poignant and less-expected comparison to the racism and religion that kept him down in the South and became the focus for that reason.… (more)
The second part was quite different. Based on other books I have read, I thought his view of the North was a bit idealistic. Maybe the silly and grating inter-politics of the Communist Party's artist clubs made a more poignant and less-expected comparison to the racism and religion that kept him down in the South and became the focus for that reason.… (more)
Lists
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Overdue Podcast (1)
Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 49
- Also by
- 63
- Members
- 16,695
- Popularity
- #1,352
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 213
- ISBNs
- 350
- Languages
- 13
- Favorited
- 32
- Touchstones
- 458
afterward Malcolm Wright (2021)
OPD: 2021 (written 1941-1942, with a shortened version published in 1944)
format: 228-page Kindle ebook
acquired: October 3 read: Oct 4-15 time reading: 5:44, 1.5 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Novel theme: Richard Wright
locations: unknown American city, probably southern
about the author: American author born on a Mississippi plantation, 1908-1960
This for me was a curiosity, part powerful, part quirky. Wright takes a close look at police brutality against African Americans (a point noted in his publisher's rejection documentation) and then an almost surreal look at a refugee living in American sewers. Fred Daniels, a good church-going upstanding person and expectant father, is arrested for a murder he knows nothing about. He's not questioned, but beat-up by an all-white police force demanding a confession. It's not clear where his mind was before this happens, but he gets rattled, and it seems his mind is never able to settle down. Instead, in the sewers he tunnels, and he stumbles across apparent odd truths about the basics in life - religion, death, money, entertainment, etc.
Maybe think Plato's cave. It's a combination of Wright's creativity and what I see has his semi-super-aware, semi-blind romantic mindset. It makes an odd combination of strange guy in a strange place doing strange things that don't quite make sense. In a long afterward, which Wright intended to be published with the novel, he explained the novel as a response to the stubborn illogical religious faith his grandmother followed and depended on, a source of conflict between he and his grandmother, his main parent during his older childhood.
This is a lost novel. Wright wrote it written during WW2, in 1942, but it was rejected for publication by his publisher. A shorter version was published in a journal, and later in a posthumous collection. Wright moved on, composing [Black Boy], his classic published in 1945. There he goes directly into his grandmother's religion and state of mind, and its impacts on him. The full version of this novel was first published in 2021, after Wright's grandson, Malcolm Wright, pushed for it.
2023
https://www.librarything.com/topic/354226#8263418… (more)