Read complete books and articles on: Richard Wright

Wright, Richard - 1908–60, American author. An African American born on a Mississippi plantation, Wright struggled through a difficult childhood and worked to educate himself. He moved to Chicago in 1927 and in the 1930s joined the city's Federal Writers' Project and wrote Uncle Tom's Children (1938), a collection of four novellas dealing with Southern racial problems. His novel Native

16 of the Best Books and Articles on: Richard Wright

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Student Companion to Richard Wright » Read Now
by Robert Felgar. 138 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Born in rural Mississippi, the grandson of slaves, Richard Wright overcame every social obstacle, including poverty, racism, and limited education to achieve literary recognition as the creator of some of America's most powerful Black literature. Written with unprecedented candor, Wright's works...
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Born in rural Mississippi, the grandson of slaves, Richard Wright overcame every social obstacle, including poverty, racism, and limited education to achieve literary recognition as the creator of some of America's most powerful Black literature. Written with unprecedented candor, Wright's works changed the cultural landscape by challenging old stereotypes and myths about race. Wright scholar Robert Felgar has written a critical volume to help students appreciate the literary significance of such groundbreaking works as Native Son and the autobiographical Black Boy. This study serves students of both literature and social history as it explores the themes of racism and all types of institutionalized oppression that Wright exposed in his provocative writing. Felgar approaches each of Wright's major works in chronological order, offering insightful literary analysis of Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, Black Boy, and The Outsider, as well as Wright's two works published posthumously, Eight Men, a collection of stories, and Lawd Today! The original, censored works are discussed and compared with the more recently republished unexpurgated versions.
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2.

Understanding Richard Wright's Black Boy: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents » Read Now
by Robert Felgar, Claudia Durst Johnson. 172 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

In Black Boy, Richard Wright triumphs over an ugly, racist world by fashioning an inspiring, powerful, beautiful, and fictionalized autobiography. To help students understand and appreciate his story in the cultural, political, racial, social, and literary contexts of its time, this casebook...
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In Black Boy, Richard Wright triumphs over an ugly, racist world by fashioning an inspiring, powerful, beautiful, and fictionalized autobiography. To help students understand and appreciate his story in the cultural, political, racial, social, and literary contexts of its time, this casebook provides a rich source of primary historical documents, collateral readings, and commentary. The selection of unique documents is designed to place in sharp relief the pervasive issue of racism in American society. Documents include excerpts from other autobiographies and a novel, legal documents, speeches, an interview, an anthropological study, magazine and newspaper articles, and contemporary editorials. Most of the documents are available in no other printed form.
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3.

Richard Wright's Native Son (literary criticism) » Read Now
by Harold Bloom. 167 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

The still controversial first novel by Richard Wright is examined in its entirety as part of this series. "School Library Journal" says ". . . these titles fill a void: literary criticism for high school students".
4.

Richard Wright's Travel Writings: New Reflections » Read Now
by Virginia Whatley Smith. 237 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Attracted to remote lands by his interest in the postcolonial struggle, Richard Wright (1908-1960) became one of the few African Americans of his time to engage in travel writing. He went to emerging nations not as a sightseer but as a student of their cultures, learning the politics and the...
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Attracted to remote lands by his interest in the postcolonial struggle, Richard Wright (1908-1960) became one of the few African Americans of his time to engage in travel writing. He went to emerging nations not as a sightseer but as a student of their cultures, learning the politics and the processes of social transformation.
When Wright fled from the United States in 1946 to live as an expatriate in Paris, he was exposed to intellectual thoughts and challenges that transcended his social and political education in America. Three events broadened his world view -- his introduction to French existentialism, the rise of the Pan-Africanist movement to decolonize Africa, and Indonesia's declaration of independence from colonial rule in 1945. During the 1950s as he traveled to emerging nations his encounters produced four travel narratives -- Black Power (1953), The Color Curtain (1956), Pagan Spain (1956), and White Man, Listen! (1957). Upon his death in 1960, he left behind an unfinished book on French West,Africa, which exists only in notes, outlines, and a draft.
Written by multinational scholars, this collection of essays exploring Wright's travel writings shows how in his hands the genre of travel writing resisted, adapted, or modified the forms and formats practiced by white authors. Enhanced by nine photographs taken by Wright during his travels, the essays focus on each of Wright's four separate narratives as well as upon his unfinished book and reveal how Wright drew on such non-Western influences as the African American slave narrative and Asian literature of protest and resistance. The essays critique Wright's representation of customs and people and employ a broad range ofinterpretive modes, including the theories of formalism, feminism, and postmodernism, among others.
Wright's travel books are proved here to be innovative narratives that laid down the roots of such later genres as postcol
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5.

America's 93 Greatest Living Authors Present This Is My Best: Over 150 Self-Chosen and Complete Masterpieces, Together with Their Reasons for Their Selections ("Richard Wright: Why He Selected 'How "Bigger" Was Born'" begins on p. 448) » Read Now
by Whit W. Burnett. 1188 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
6.

The Failure of Folklore in Richard Wright's Black Boy, in Journal of American Folklore » Read Now
by Jay Mechling. 20 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
7.

A World More Attractive: A View of Modern Literature and Politics ("Black Boys and Native Sons" begins on p. 98) » Read Now
by Irving Howe. 310 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
8.

The Critical Response to Richard Wright » Read Now
by Robert J. Butler. 199 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Richard Wright is widely recognized as one of the most important African-American writers and as a significant 20th-century author. With the publication of Native Son in 1940, Wright established his enduring reputation. This volume is a survey of critical responses to Richard Wright from Native Son...
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Richard Wright is widely recognized as one of the most important African-American writers and as a significant 20th-century author. With the publication of Native Son in 1940, Wright established his enduring reputation. This volume is a survey of critical responses to Richard Wright from Native Son to the present day. Selections range from seminal works by Blyden Jackson, James Baldwin, and Keneth Kinnamon to more recent works by a new generation of Wright scholars.
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9.

The World of Richard Wright » Read Now
by Michel Fabre. 268 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Wide-ranging essays in which Wright's biographer probes the career, ideology, complex life, & achievements of America's premier black writer. "A major contribution to Wright studies"--Keneth Kinnamon. "Full of insights into cultural history & radical politics, race relations, & literary...
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Wide-ranging essays in which Wright's biographer probes the career, ideology, complex life, & achievements of America's premier black writer. "A major contribution to Wright studies"--Keneth Kinnamon. "Full of insights into cultural history & radical politics, race relations, & literary connections...sets a high standard for scholarship to come"--Werner Sollors.
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10.

The Art of Richard Wright » Read Now
by Edward Margolies. 184 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
11.

Voice of a Native Son: The Poetics of Richard Wright » Read Now
by Eugene E. Miller. 272 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Wright's works most often have been judged by his own ideological polemics, seldom by the terms of art. This, however, is a study of Wright's poetics, rich in a black aesthetic force that was the elemental voice in his writings.
12.

Richard Wright: Books and Writers » Read Now
by Michel Fabre. 308 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

A bibliography of Wright's library, this will serve as the key to understanding the development, the philosophies, & the aesthetics of this greatest of black American writers.
13.

Gertrude Stein and Richard Wright: The Poetics and Politics of Modernism » Read Now
by Gertrude Stein, Richard Wright, M. Lynn Weiss. 154 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Gertrude Stein and Richard Wright began their careers as marginals within marginalized groups, and their desire to live peacefully in unorthodox marriages led them away from America and into permanent exile in France. Still, the obvious differences between them - in class, ethnic and racial origins...
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Gertrude Stein and Richard Wright began their careers as marginals within marginalized groups, and their desire to live peacefully in unorthodox marriages led them away from America and into permanent exile in France. Still, the obvious differences between them - in class, ethnic and racial origins, and in artistic expression - beg the question: What was there to talk about? This question opens a window onto each writer's meditations on the influence of racial, ethnic, and national origins on the formation of identity in a modern and post-modern world.
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14.

The Racial Problem in the Works of Richard Wright and James Baldwin » Read Now
by Jean-Franois Gounard, Joseph J. Rodgers Jr., Jean F. Beranger. 303 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Both writers reflect the profound desire of black Americans to be recognized as first-class citizens: Wright aroused white America's conscience, Baldwin made that conscience experience guilt.
15.

The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition (Chap. 5 "Richard Wright and the Triumph of Naturalism") » Read Now
by Bernard W. Bell. 426 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
16.

American Culture in Europe: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Chap. 7 "Choosing Exile: Richard Wright, the Existentialists, and Cultural Exchange") » Read Now
by Mike-Frank G. Epitropoulos, Victor Roudometof. 212 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

These essays examine the proliferation of American culture in Europe and focus on the degree and manner in which American cultural influences are spread. Topics range from German advertising in the 1980s to US influence in post-Soviet Russia to Greek youth's fascination with American commercial culture.