Richard Wright (author)

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard Wright
Wright in a 1939 photograph by Carl Van Vechten
Wright in a 1939 photograph by Carl Van Vechten
Born Richard Nathaniel Wright
September 4, 1908
Plantation, Roxie, Mississippi, U.S.
Died November 28, 1960 (aged 52)
Paris, France
Occupation
Novelistpoetessayistshort story writer
Period 1938–60
Genre Drama, fiction, non-fiction, autobiography
Notable works Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, Black Boy, The Outsider
Spouses
Dhimah Rose Meidman

(m. 1939; div. 1940)

Ellen Poplar (m. 1941)
Children 2
Richard Nathaniel Wright (September 4, 1908 – November 28, 1960) was an American
author of novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature
concerns racial themes, especially related to the plight of African Americans
during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries suffering discrimination and violence.
His best known works include the novella collection Uncle Tom's Children (1938),
the novel Native Son (1940), and the memoir Black Boy (1945). Literary critics
believe his work helped change race relations in the United States in the mid-20th
century.

Early life and education

A historic marker in Natchez, Mississippi, commemorating Richard Wright, who was

born near the city
Childhood in the South
Richard Nathaniel Wright was born on September 4, 1908, at Rucker's Plantation,
between the train town of Roxie and the larger river city of Natchez, Mississippi.
[1] He was the son of Nathan Wright, a sharecropper,[1] and Ella (Wilson),[2] a
schoolteacher.[1][3] His parents were born free after the Civil War; both sets of
his grandparents had been born into slavery and freed as a result of the war. Each
of his grandfathers had taken part in the U.S. Civil War and gained freedom through
service: his paternal grandfather, Nathan Wright, had served in the 28th United
States Colored Troops; his maternal grandfather, Richard Wilson, escaped from
slavery in the South to serve in the U.S. Navy as a Landsman in April 1865.[4]

Richard's father left the family when Richard was six years old, and he did not see
Richard for 25 years. In 1911 or 1912 Ella moved to Natchez, Mississippi, to be
with her parents. While living in his grandparents' home, he accidentally set the
house on fire. Wright's mother was so angry that she beat him until he was
unconscious.[5][6] In 1915, Ella put her sons in Settlement House, a Methodist
orphanage, for a short time.[5][7] He was enrolled at Howe Institute in Memphis
from 1915 to 1916.[1] In 1916, his mother moved with Richard and his younger
brother to live with her sister Maggie (Wilson) and Maggie's husband Silas Hoskins
(born 1882) in Elaine, Arkansas. This part of Arkansas was in the Mississippi Delta
where former cotton plantations had been. The Wrights were forced to flee after
Silas Hoskins "disappeared," reportedly killed by a white man who coveted his
successful saloon business.[8] After his mother became incapacitated by a stroke,
Richard was separated from his younger brother and lived briefly with his uncle
Clark Wilson and aunt Jodie in Greenwood, Mississippi.[1] At the age of 12, he had
not yet had a single complete year of schooling. Soon Richard with his younger
brother and mother returned to the home of his maternal grandmother, which was now
in the state capital, Jackson, Mississippi, where he lived from early 1920 until
late 1925. His grandparents, still angry at him for destroying their house,
repeatedly beat Wright and his brother.[6] But while he lived there, he was finally
able to attend school regularly. He attended the local Seventh-day Adventist school
from 1920 to 1921, with his aunt Addie as his teacher.[1][5] After a year, at the
age of 13 he entered the Jim Hill public school in 1921, where he was promoted to
sixth grade after only two weeks.[9] In his grandparents' Seventh-day Adventist
home, Richard was miserable, largely because his controlling aunt and grandmother
tried to force him to pray so he might build a relationship with God. Wright later
threatened to move out of his grandmother's home when she would not allow him to
work on the Adventist Sabbath, Saturday. His aunt's and grandparents' overbearing
attempts to control him caused him to carry over hostility towards Biblical and
Christian teachings to solve life's problems. This theme would weave through his
writings throughout his life.[7]

At the age of 15, while in eighth grade, Wright published his first story, "The
Voodoo of Hell's Half-Acre," in the local Black newspaper Southern Register. No
copies survive.[7] In Chapter 7 of Black Boy, he described the story as about a
villain who sought a widow's home.[10]

In 1923, after excelling in grade school and junior high, Wright earned the
position of class valedictorian of Smith Robertson Junior High School from which he
graduated in May 1925.[1] He was assigned to write a speech to be delivered at
graduation in a public auditorium. Before graduation day, he was called to the
principal's office, where the principal gave him a prepared speech to present in
place of his own. Richard challenged the principal, saying "the people are coming
to hear the students, and I won't make a speech that you've written."[11] The
principal threatened him, suggesting that Richard might not be allowed to graduate
if he persisted, despite his having passed all the examinations. He also tried to
entice Richard with an opportunity to become a teacher. Determined not to be called
an Uncle Tom, Richard refused to deliver the principal's address, written to avoid
offending the white school district officials. He was able to convince everyone to
allow him to read the words he had written himself.[7]

In September that year, Wright registered for mathematics, English, and history
courses at the new Lanier High School, constructed for black students in Jackson—
the state's schools were segregated under its Jim Crow laws—but he had to stop
attending classes after a few weeks of irregular attendance because he needed to
earn money to support his family.[7][12]

In November 1925 at the age of 17, Wright moved on his own to Memphis, Tennessee.
There he fed his appetite for reading. His hunger for books was so great that
Wright devised a successful ploy to borrow books from the segregated white library.
Using a library card lent by a white coworker, which he presented with forged notes
that claimed he was picking up books for the white man, Wright was able to obtain
and read books forbidden to black people in the Jim Crow South. This stratagem also
allowed him access to publications such as Harper's, the Atlantic Monthly, and The
American Mercury.[7]
He planned to have his mother come and live with him once he could support her, and
in 1926, his mother and younger brother did rejoin him. Shortly thereafter, Richard
resolved to leave the Jim Crow South and go to Chicago.[13] His family joined the
Great Migration, when tens of thousands of blacks left the South to seek
opportunities in the more economically prosperous northern and mid-western
industrial cities.

Wright's childhood in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas shaped his lasting

impressions of American racism.[14]

Coming of age in Chicago

Wright and his family moved to Chicago in 1927, where he secured employment as a
United States postal clerk.[8] He used his time in between shifts to study other
writers including H.L. Mencken, whose vision of the American South as a version of
Hell made an impression. When he lost his job there during the Great Depression,
Wright was forced to go on relief in 1931.[7] In 1932, he began attending meetings
of the John Reed Club, a Marxist literary organization.[7][15] Wright established
relationships and networked with party members. Wright formally joined the
Communist Party and the John Reed Club in late 1933 at the urging of his friend
Abraham Aaron.[citation needed] As a revolutionary poet, he wrote proletarian poems
("We of the Red Leaves of Red Books", for example), for New Masses and other
communist-leaning periodicals.[7] A power struggle within the Chicago chapter of
the John Reed Club had led to the dissolution of the club's leadership; Wright was
told he had the support of the club's party members if he was willing to join the
party.[16]

In 1933, Wright founded the South Side Writers Group, whose members included Arna
Bontemps and Margaret Walker.[17][18] Through the group and his membership in the
John Reed Club, Wright founded and edited Left Front, a literary magazine. Wright
began publishing his poetry ("A Red Love Note" and "Rest for the Weary" for
example) there in 1934.[19] There is dispute about the demise in 1935 of Left Front
Magazine as Wright blamed the Communist Party despite his protests.[20] It is
however likely due to the proposal at the 1934 Midwest Writers Congress that the
John Reed Club be replaced by a Communist Party-sanctioned First American Party
Congress.[citation needed] Throughout this period, Wright continued to contribute
to New Masses magazine, revealing the path his writings would ultimately take.[21]

By 1935, Wright had completed the manuscript of his first novel, Cesspool, which
was rejected by eight publishers and published posthumously as Lawd Today (1963).
[8][22] This first work featured autobiographical anecdotes about working at a post
office in Chicago during the great depression.[23]

In January 1936 his story "Big Boy Leaves Home" was accepted for publication in the
anthology New Caravan and the anthology Uncle Tom's Children, focusing on black
life in the rural American South.[24]

In February of that year, he began working with the National Negro Congress (NNC),
speaking at the Chicago convention on "The Role of the Negro Artist and Writer in
the Changing Social Order".[25] His ultimate goal (looking at other labor unions as
inspiration) was the development of NNC-sponsored publications, exhibits, and
conferences alongside the Federal Writers' Project to get work for black artists.
[25]

In 1937, he became the Harlem editor of the Daily Worker. This assignment compiled
quotes from interviews preceded by an introductory paragraph, thus allowing him
time for other pursuits like the publication of Uncle Tom's Children a year later.
[19]
Pleased by his positive relations with white Communists in Chicago, Wright was
later humiliated in New York City by some white party members who rescinded an
offer to find housing for him when they learned his race.[26] Some black Communists
denounced Wright as a "bourgeois intellectual." Wright was essentially
autodidactic. He had been forced to end his public education to support his mother
and brother after completing junior high school.[27]

Throughout the Soviet pact with Nazi Germany in 1940, Wright continued to focus his
attention on racism in the United States.[28] He would ultimately break from the
Communist Party when they broke from a tradition against segregation and racism and
joined Stalinists supporting the US entering World War II in 1941.[28]

Wright insisted that young communist writers be given space to cultivate their
talents. Wright later described this episode through his fictional character Buddy
Nealson, an African-American communist in his essay "I tried to be a Communist,"
published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1944. This text was an excerpt of his
autobiography scheduled to be published as American Hunger but was removed from the
actual publication of Black Boy upon request by the Book of the Month Club.[29]
Indeed, his relations with the party turned violent; Wright was threatened at
knifepoint by fellow-traveler co-workers, denounced as a Trotskyite in the street
by strikers, and physically assaulted by former comrades when he tried to join them
during the 1936 Labour Day march.[30]

Career
In Chicago in 1932, Wright began writing with the Federal Writer's Project and
became a member of the American Communist Party. In 1937, he relocated to New York
and became the Bureau Chief of the communist publication The Daily Worker.[31] He
would write over 200 articles for the publication from 1937 to 1938. This allowed
him to cover stories and issues that interested him, revealing depression era
America into light with well written prose.[32]

He worked on the Federal Writers' Project guidebook to the city, New York Panorama
(1938), and wrote the book's essay on Harlem. Through the summer and fall he wrote
more than 200 articles for the Daily Worker and helped edit a short-lived literary
magazine New Challenge. The year was also a landmark for Wright because he met and
developed a friendship with writer Ralph Ellison that would last for years. He was
awarded the Story magazine first prize of $500 for his short story "Fire and
Cloud".[33]

After receiving the Story prize in early 1938, Wright shelved his manuscript of
Lawd Today and dismissed his literary agent, John Troustine. He hired Paul
Reynolds, the well-known agent of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, to represent him.
Meanwhile, the Story Press offered the publisher Harper all of Wright's prize-entry
stories for a book, and Harper agreed to publish the collection.

Wright gained national attention for the collection of four short stories entitled
Uncle Tom's Children (1938). He based some stories on lynching in the Deep South.
The publication and favorable reception of Uncle Tom's Children improved Wright's
status with the Communist party and enabled him to establish a reasonable degree of
financial stability. He was appointed to the editorial board of New Masses.
Granville Hicks, a prominent literary critic and Communist sympathizer, introduced
him at leftist teas in Boston. By May 6, 1938, excellent sales had provided Wright
with enough money to move to Harlem, where he began writing the novel Native Son,
which was published in 1940.

Based on his collected short stories, Wright applied for and was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship, which gave him a stipend allowing him to complete Native
Son. During this period, he rented a room in the home of friends Herbert and Jane
Newton, an interracial couple and prominent Communists whom Wright had known in
Chicago.[34] They had moved to New York and lived at 109 Lefferts Place in Brooklyn
in the Fort Greene neighborhood.[35]

After publication, Native Son was selected by the Book of the Month Club as its
first book by an African-American author. It was a daring choice. The lead
character, Bigger Thomas, is bound by the limitations that society places on
African Americans. Unlike most in this situation, he gains his own agency and self-
knowledge only by committing heinous acts. Wright's characterization of Bigger led
to him being criticized for his concentration on violence in his works. In the case
of Native Son, people complained that he portrayed a black man in ways that seemed
to confirm whites' worst fears. The period following publication of Native Son was
a busy time for Wright. In July 1940 he went to Chicago to do research for a folk
history of blacks to accompany photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam. While in
Chicago he visited the American Negro Exposition with Langston Hughes, Arna
Bontemps and Claude McKay.

Canada Lee as Bigger Thomas in the Orson Welles production of Native Son (1941)
Wright traveled to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to collaborate with playwright Paul
Green on a dramatic adaptation of Native Son. In January 1941 Wright received the
prestigious Spingarn Medal of the NAACP for noteworthy achievement. His play Native
Son opened on Broadway in March 1941, with Orson Welles as director, to generally
favorable reviews. Wright also wrote the text to accompany a volume of photographs
chosen by Rosskam, which were almost completely drawn from the files of the Farm
Security Administration. The FSA had employed top photographers to travel around
the country and capture images of Americans. Their collaboration, Twelve Million
Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States, was published in
October 1941 to wide critical acclaim.

Wright's memoir Black Boy (1945) describes his early life from Roxie up until his
move to Chicago at age 19. It includes his clashes with his Seventh-day Adventist
family, his troubles with white employers, and social isolation. It also describes
his intellectual journey through these struggles. American Hunger, which was
published posthumously in 1977, was originally intended by Wright as the second
volume of Black Boy. The Library of America edition of 1991 finally restored the
book to its original two-volume form.[36]

American Hunger details Wright's participation in the John Reed Clubs and the
Communist Party, which he left in 1942. The book implies he left earlier, but he
did not announce his withdrawal until 1944.[37] In the book's restored form, Wright
used the diptych structure to compare the certainties and intolerance of organized
communism, which condemned "bourgeois" books and certain members, with similar
restrictive qualities of fundamentalist organized religion. Wright disapproved of
Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in the Soviet Union.

France

Plaque commemorating Wright's residence in Paris, at 14, rue Monsieur le Prince.

Following a stay of a few months in Québec, Canada, including a lengthy stay in the
village of Sainte-Pétronille on the Île d'Orléans,[38] Wright moved to Paris in
1946. He became a permanent American expatriate.[39]

In Paris, Wright became friends with French writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert
Camus, whom he had met while still in New York, and he and his wife became
particularly good friends with Simone de Beauvoir, who stayed with them in 1947.
[40] However, as Michel Fabre argues, Wright's existentialist leanings were more
influenced by Soren Kierkegaard, Edmund Husserl, and especially Martin Heidegger.
[41] In following Fabre's argument, with respect to Wright's existentialist
proclivities during the period of 1946 to 1951, Hue Woodson suggests that Wright's
exposure to Husserl and Heidegger "directly came as an intended consequence of the
inadequacies of Sartre's synthesis of existentialism and Marxism for Wright."[42]
His Existentialist phase was expressed in his second novel, The Outsider (1953),
which described an African-American character's involvement with the Communist
Party in New York. He also became friends with fellow expatriate writers Chester
Himes and James Baldwin. His relationship with the latter ended in acrimony after
Baldwin published his essay "Everybody's Protest Novel" (collected in Notes of a
Native Son), in which he criticized Wright's portrayal of Bigger Thomas as
stereotypical. In 1954 Wright published Savage Holiday.

After becoming a French citizen in 1947, Wright continued to travel through Europe,
Asia, and Africa. He drew material from these trips for numerous nonfiction works.
In 1949, Wright contributed to the anti-communist anthology The God That Failed;
his essay had been published in the Atlantic Monthly three years earlier and was
derived from the unpublished portion of Black Boy. He was invited to join the
Congress for Cultural Freedom, which he rejected, correctly suspecting that it had
connections with the CIA. Fearful of links between African Americans and
communists, the FBI had Wright under surveillance starting in 1943. With the
heightened communist fears of the 1950s, Wright was blacklisted by Hollywood movie
studio executives. But in 1950, he starred as the teenager Bigger Thomas (Wright
was 42) in an Argentinian film version of Native Son.

In mid-1953, Wright traveled to the Gold Coast, where Kwame Nkrumah was leading the
country to independence from British rule, to be established as Ghana. Before
Wright returned to Paris, he gave a confidential report to the United States
consulate in Accra on what he had learned about Nkrumah and his political party.
After Wright returned to Paris, he met twice with an officer from the U.S. State
Department. The officer's report includes what Wright had learned from Nkrumah's
adviser George Padmore about Nkrumah's plans for the Gold Coast after independence.
Padmore, a Trinidadian living in London, believed Wright to be a good friend. His
many letters in the Wright papers at Yale's Beinecke Library attest to this, and
the two men continued their correspondence. Wright's book on his African journey,
Black Power, was published in 1954; its London publisher was Dennis Dobson, who
also published Padmore's work.[43]

Whatever political motivations Wright had for reporting to American officials, he

was also an American who wanted to stay abroad and needed their approval to have
his passport renewed. According to Wright biographer Addison Gayle, a few months
later Wright talked to officials at the American embassy in Paris about people he
had met in the Communist Party; at the time these individuals were being prosecuted
in the US under the Smith Act.[44]

Historian Carol Polsgrove explored why Wright appeared to have little to say about
the increasing activism of the civil rights movement during the 1950s in the United
States. She found that Wright was under what his friend Chester Himes called
"extraordinary pressure" to avoid writing about the US.[45] As Ebony magazine
delayed publishing his essay, "I Choose Exile," Wright finally suggested publishing
it in a white periodical. He believed that "a white periodical would be less
vulnerable to accusations of disloyalty."[45] He thought the Atlantic Monthly was
interested, but in the end, the piece went unpublished.[45][46]

In 1955, Wright visited Indonesia for the Bandung Conference. He recorded his
observations on the conference as well as on Indonesian cultural conditions in The
Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference. Wright was enthusiastic about
the possibilities posed by this meeting of newly independent, former colonial
nations. He gave at least two lectures to Indonesian cultural groups, including PEN
Club Indonesia, and he interviewed Indonesian artists and intellectuals in
preparation to write The Color Curtain.[47] Several Indonesian artists and
intellectuals whom Wright met, later commented on how he had depicted Indonesian
cultural conditions in his travel writing.[48]

Other works by Wright included White Man, Listen! (1957) and a novel The Long Dream
(1958), which was adapted as a play and produced in New York in 1960 by Ketti
Frings. It explores the relationship between a man named Fish and his father.[49] A
collection of short stories, Eight Men, was published posthumously in 1961, shortly
after Wright's death. These works dealt primarily with the poverty, anger, and
protests of northern and southern urban black Americans.

His agent, Paul Reynolds, sent strongly negative criticism of Wright's 400-page
Island of Hallucinations manuscript in February 1959.[citation needed] Despite
that, in March Wright outlined a novel in which his character Fish was to be
liberated from racial conditioning and become dominating. By May 1959, Wright
wanted to leave Paris and live in London. He felt French politics had become
increasingly submissive to United States pressure. The peaceful Parisian atmosphere
he had enjoyed had been shattered by quarrels and attacks instigated by enemies of
the expatriate black writers.

On June 26, 1959, after a party marking the French publication of White Man,
Listen!, Wright became ill. He suffered a virulent attack of amoebic dysentery,
probably contracted during his 1953 stay on the Gold Coast. By November 1959 his
wife had found a London apartment, but Wright's illness and "four hassles in twelve
days" with British immigration officials ended his desire to live in England.
[citation needed]

On February 19, 1960, Wright learned from his agent Reynolds that the New York
premiere of the stage adaptation of The Long Dream received such bad reviews that
the adapter, Ketti Frings, had decided to cancel further performances. Meanwhile,
Wright was running into added problems trying to get The Long Dream published in
France. These setbacks prevented his finishing revisions of Island of
Hallucinations, for which he was trying to get a publication commitment from
Doubleday and Company.

In June 1960, Wright recorded a series of discussions for French radio, dealing
primarily with his books and literary career. He also addressed the racial
situation in the United States and the world, and specifically denounced American
policy in Africa. In late September, to cover extra expenses for his daughter
Julia's move from London to Paris to attend the Sorbonne, Wright wrote blurbs for
record jackets for Nicole Barclay, director of the largest record company in Paris.

In spite of his financial straits, Wright refused to compromise his principles. He

declined to participate in a series of programs for Canadian radio because he
suspected American control. For the same reason, he rejected an invitation from the
Congress for Cultural Freedom to go to India to speak at a conference in memory of
Leo Tolstoy. Still interested in literature, Wright helped Kyle Onstott get his
novel Mandingo (1957) published in France.

Wright's last display of explosive energy occurred on November 8, 1960, in his

polemical lecture, "The Situation of the Black Artist and Intellectual in the
United States," delivered to students and members of the American Church in Paris.
He argued that American society reduced the most militant members of the black
community to slaves whenever they wanted to question the racial status quo. He
offered as proof the subversive attacks of the Communists against Native Son and
the quarrels which James Baldwin and other authors sought with him. On November 26,
1960, Wright talked enthusiastically with Langston Hughes about his work Daddy
Goodness and gave him the manuscript.

Wright's grave
Wright died of a heart attack in Paris on November 28, 1960, at the age of 52. He
was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery.[50] Wright's daughter Julia has claimed
that her father was murdered.[51]

A number of Wright's works have been published posthumously. In addition, some of

Wright's more shocking passages dealing with race, sex, and politics were cut or
omitted before original publication of works during his lifetime. In 1991,
unexpurgated versions of Native Son, Black Boy, and his other works were published.
In addition, in 1994, his novella Rite of Passage was published for the first time.
[52]

In the last years of his life, Wright had become enamored of the Japanese poetic
form haiku and wrote more than 4,000 such short poems. In 1998 a book was published
(Haiku: This Other World) with 817 of his own favorite haiku. Many of these haiku
have an uplifting quality even as they deal with coming to terms with loneliness,
death, and the forces of nature.

A collection of Wright's travel writings was published by the University Press of

Mississippi in 2001. At his death, Wright left an unfinished book, A Father's Law,
[53] dealing with a black policeman and the son he suspects of murder. His daughter
Julia Wright published A Father's Law in January 2008. An omnibus edition
containing Wright's political works was published under the title Three Books from
Exile: Black Power; The Color Curtain; and White Man, Listen!

Personal life
In August 1939, with Ralph Ellison as best man,[54] Wright married Dhimah Rose
Meidman,[55] a modern-dance teacher of Russian Jewish ancestry. The marriage ended
a year later.

On March 12, 1941, he married Ellen Poplar (née Poplowitz),[56][57] a Communist

organizer from Brooklyn.[58] They had two daughters: Julia, born in 1942, and
Rachel, born in 1949.[57]

Ellen Wright, who died on April 6, 2004, aged 92, was the executor of Wright's
estate. In this capacity, she unsuccessfully sued a biographer, the poet and writer
Margaret Walker, in Wright v. Warner Books, Inc. She was a literary agent, and her
clients included Simone de Beauvoir, Eldridge Cleaver, and Violette Leduc.[59][60]

Awards and honors

The Spingarn Medal in 1941 from the NAACP[61]
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1939
Story Magazine Award in 1938.[33]
In April 2009, Wright was featured on a U.S. postage stamp. The 61-cent, two-ounce
rate stamp is the 25th installment of the literary arts series, and features a
portrait of Wright in front of snow-swept tenements on the South Side of Chicago, a
scene that recalls the setting of Native Son.[62]
In 2010, Wright was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.[63]
In 2012, the Historic Districts Council and the New York City Landmarks
Preservation Commission, in collaboration with the Fort Greene Association and
writer/musician Carl Hancock Rux, erected a cultural medallion at 175 Carlton
Avenue, Brooklyn, where Wright lived in 1938 and completed Native Son.[64] The
group unveiled the plaque at a public ceremony with guest speakers, including
playwright Lynn Nottage and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.
Legacy

Banned Books Week reading of Black Boy at Shimer College in 2013

Black Boy became an instant best-seller upon its publication in 1945.[65] Wright's
stories published during the 1950s disappointed some critics who said that his move
to Europe had alienated him from African Americans and separated him from his
emotional and psychological roots.[66] Many of Wright's works failed to satisfy the
rigid standards of New Criticism during a period when the works of younger black
writers gained in popularity.[67]

During the 1950s Wright grew more internationalist in outlook. While he

accomplished much as an important public literary and political figure with a
worldwide reputation, his creative work did decline.[68]

While interest in Black Boy ebbed during the 1950s, this has remained one of his
best selling books. Since the late 20th century, critics have had a resurgence of
interest in it. Black Boy remains a vital work of historical, sociological, and
literary significance whose seminal portrayal of one black man's search for self-
actualization in a racist society strongly influenced the works of African-American
writers who followed, such as James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison. John A. Williams
included a fictionalized version of Wright's life and death in his 1967 novel The
Man Who Cried I Am.

It is generally agreed that the influence of Wright's Native Son is not a matter of
literary style or technique.[69] Rather, this book affected ideas and attitudes,
and Native Son has been a force in the social and intellectual history of the
United States in the last half of the 20th century. "Wright was one of the people
who made me conscious of the need to struggle," said writer Amiri Baraka.[70]

During the 1970s and 1980s, scholars published critical essays about Wright in
prestigious journals. Richard Wright conferences were held on university campuses
from Mississippi to New Jersey. A new film version of Native Son, with a screenplay
by Richard Wesley, was released in December 1986. Certain Wright novels became
required reading in a number of American high schools, universities and colleges.
[71]

Recent critics have called for a reassessment of Wright's later work in view of his
philosophical project. Notably, Paul Gilroy has argued that "the depth of his
philosophical interests has been either overlooked or misconceived by the almost
exclusively literary inquiries that have dominated analysis of his writing."[72]
[73]

Wright was featured in a 90-minute documentary about the WPA Writers' Project
entitled Soul of a People: Writing America's Story (2009).[74] His life and work
during the 1930s is highlighted in the companion book, Soul of a People: The WPA
Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America.[75]

Publications
Collections
Richard Wright: Early Works (Arnold Rampersad, ed.) (Library of America, 1989),
Richard Wright: Later Works (Arnold Rampersad, ed.) (Library of America, 1991).
Drama
Native Son: The Biography of a Young American with Paul Green (New York: Harper,
1941)
Fiction
Uncle Tom's Children (New York: Harper, 1938) (collection of novellas)
The Man Who Was Almost a Man (New York: Harper, 1940) (short story)
Native Son (New York: Harper, 1940) (novel)
The Man Who Lived Underground (1942) (short story)
The Outsider (New York: Harper, 1953) (novel)
Savage Holiday (New York: Avon, 1954) (novel)
The Long Dream (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1958) (novel)
Eight Men (Cleveland and New York: World, 1961) (collection of short stories)
Lawd Today (New York: Walker, 1963) (novel)
Rite of Passage (New York: HarperCollins, 1994) (short story)
A Father's Law (London: Harper Perennial, 2008) (unfinished novel)
The Man Who Lived Underground (Library of America, 2021) (novel)
Non-fiction
How "Bigger" Was Born; Notes of a Native Son (New York: Harper, 1940)
12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (New
York: Viking, 1941)
Black Boy (New York: Harper, 1945)
Black Power (New York: Harper, 1954)
The Color Curtain (Cleveland and New York: World, 1956)
Pagan Spain (New York: Harper, 1957)
Letters to Joe C. Brown (Kent State University Libraries, 1968)
American Hunger (New York: Harper & Row, 1977)
Conversations with Richard Wright (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1993).
Black Power: Three Books from Exile: "Black Power"; "The Color Curtain"; and "White
Man, Listen!" (Harper Perennial, 2008)
Essays
The Ethics Of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch (1937)
Introduction to Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (1945)
I Choose Exile (1951)
White Man, Listen! (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1957)
Blueprint for Negro Literature (New York City, New York) (1937)[76]
The God that Failed (contributor) (1949)
Poetry
Haiku: This Other World (eds. Yoshinobu Hakutani and Robert L. Tener; Arcade, 1998,
ISBN 0385720246)
re-issue (paperback): Haiku: The Last Poetry of Richard Wright (Arcade Publishing,
2012).