Richard Wright
Cliff Joseph A.
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Richard Wright was a Colored, Negro, Afro, or Black and today would be considered an African- American writer during the “New Renaissance” period (1910- 1954). Wright was born near Natchez, Mississippi, in 1908. That Southern childhood played an important role in his development as a writer.??The experiences that influenced Wright’s writing were educational, political, and racial disadvantages that Blacks faced in the south and still face around the entire globe today!?
Consequently, all of his poetry, short stories, and novels would later address these problems in the form of protest.??His protests were “[firmly, unyielding, and vulgarly, loud against] racism, severely, rebuking, its economic, sociological and psychological effects on the lives of Black people”?(Joyce 8).?Therefore, an individual who knows Richard Wright’s background can truly appreciate the objective of his works.
Richard Wright’s childhood in the south was during a time of torment. As a child, he nearly burned down the family’s house. That resulted in his mother almost beating him to death. Furthermore, Wright’s father deserted his family shortly after. This incident led to poverty and constant movement for Wright’s family. That family moved from one relative’s house to another, which limited Wright’s formal education. It was not until the seventh- grade that he completed a full year at the same underfunded school.?
The stability in Wright’s education came when his family moved in with his grandparents. However, he now faced a different problem, his “[grandmother] was an ardent member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church” (Black Boy 113).??She believed that “[Wright did not need textbooks because they were worldly]” (Black Boy 135). In reading this literary scholar’s works, it would never occur to an individual that Wright was never exposed to books at a young age. Those are a few reasons why Richard Wright left the south in 1927; and, left such an imprint on yours truly!
Margaret Walker writes in??Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius that, “ Richard Wright left the south [for Chicago] in November of 1927” (53).??He resided in Chicago for ten years from 1927 to 1937.??His Chicago days were considered by some scholars as
"The making of Richard Wright, it was in the 1930s. In that decade?three of the most memorable things of his life development: He became a political animal with social perspective and the Marxist philosophy; he learned [his] craft… (Walker)"
However, the time spent in Chicago only developed the raw ideals that Wright formed in the south. For example, Wright’s first published work, Uncle Tom’s Children, would not have been possible without his southern experiences. That collection of stories addresses the oppression he weathered that Black Folks are still feeling today!??According to Ralph Ellison, Uncle Tom’s Children “[Takes] for its characters Negro men and women at bay in the oppressive southern environment” (Uncle Tom BC).??Therefore, the days in the south were as important in the “making of Richard Wright” (Unknown).
While in the Windy City, Chi-town, Chicago, Wright joined the Democratic and Republican parties, and would later leave these parties because of their racist practices! This is what led him to join the communist party in 1932. His involvement in the communist party introduced him to the John Reed Club and the League of American Writers. These organizations helped Wright get his early poetry published in the Left Wing Magazine. Some of the poems such as “A Red Love Note” was “a clear expression of his- newfound communist beliefs” (Walker 65). However, Wright’s real break came when the Roosevelt Administration introduced the Works Progress Administration (WPA). That Program offered opportunities to young writers such as Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Margaret Walker, and Richard Wright.?
Wright’s WPA involvement led him to New York. Once in the Big Apple, Wright won a contest sponsored by WPA, for “Fire and Cloud,” a story in?Uncle Tom’s Children.??That sparked his interest in publishing and gave birth to?Native Son.
? Native Son?was Wright’s most renowned work. In 1940, it sold over 200,000 copies during the first month in print and still is selling and taught in courses today. Go to any bookstore that is still open or ask google and you will find it on the shelves, in an online store, or on a syllabus somewhere in America.?
However, a fact that most people don’t know is that Wright based part of this novel on the Robert Nixon Trial. That trial occurred in Chicago at the same time Wright was writing?Native Son.??Who was “Robert Nixon[? “He] was a young Black man who had confessed to killing five women and raping others” (walker 122). Wright questioned the validity of these types of confession in?Nation Son.?The main character of?Native Son, Bigger (rhythms with ?), and his confession scene show how Black men in American could be charged with unsolved murders.?
You raped her, didn’t you Well, if you won’t tell about Bessie, Then tell me about that [one] you raped and choked to death over on University Avenue last fall. Was the man trying to scare him, or did he really think he had done other killing.’ (Native 283)?
Wright makes a connection between Nixon’s trial and Bigger’s trial in?Nation Son
Richard Wright was much more than an author. He was an activist who used his writings as a means of eliminating racism.??This led Wright to write about the struggles that Blacks had overcome and are being forced back into today. Therefore, to know Richard Wright’s struggles and literature is to know a part of the Black struggle and a races of peoples history in America.??
If you don’t think so pick up any on of these books?Invisible Man,?Going to Meet the Men,?The Spook Who Sat by the Door,?Annie Allen,?Black Bourgeoisie,?Black Men, Obsolete, Single, Dangerous?,?The Ways of White Folks,?The New?Cavalcade: African American Writing?I?and II: The Afrikan American Family in Transition,??to see how closely the struggles of the past are the same struggles of today. There are just dressed up in new clothes.?
A LAZY WORK CITED
JOYCE?
领英推荐
WALKER?
WRIGHT | Black Boy?
Native Son
Uncle Tom’s Children?
NOTABLE?
WHEATLEY
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