Richard Wright
- LAST REVIEWED: 04 October 2016
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 June 2016
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0018
- LAST REVIEWED: 04 October 2016
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 June 2016
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0018
Introduction
Richard Wright (b. 1908–d. 1960) is regarded today as one of the most important African American writers. Not only was his life and work influential in African American life, but Wright has also been accorded status as a major modern American writer, ranked with such greats as Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway. In discussing the importance of Richard Wright, Irving Howe, the eminent modern critic, said, “The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever.” “No matter how much qualifying the book might later need,” Howe observed, “it made impossible a repetition of the old lies. In all its crudeness, melodrama and claustrophobia of vision, Richard Wright’s novel brought out into the open, as no one ever had before, the hatred, fear and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our culture” (A World More Attractive, 1963, pp. 100–101). It would appear, from the intensive commentary of the half century since Wright published his earliest works, that the significance of his writings comes not so much from his technique and style, but from the particular impact his ideas and attitudes have made on American life. To assess his achievements in such terms would require a broad study, not only of his art, but also of the social and cultural backgrounds of his work. His early critics’ first consideration was of race. They were unanimous in the view that if Wright had not been black his work would not have been so significant. As his vision of the world extended beyond the United States, his quest for solutions expanded from the problems of race to those of politics and economics in the emerging Third World. Finally, his long exile in France gave his national and international concerns a universal dimension. Indeed, Wright’s development was marked by an ability to respond to the currents of the social and intellectual history of his time. Wright was a remarkably resilient thinker and writer. His successes are beyond dispute, his failures understandable. He has fascinated not only literary critics, but also philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and historians. Though some of his works did not fit in with the rigid standards of literary criticism, his evolution as a writer has enlightened readers the world over. In the mid-20th century, the New Criticism was in vogue, and critics were more interested in a writer’s artistry than ideas. Literary criticism in this period demanded that texts be analyzed and interpreted in terms of the writing within the text without reference to the personal and historical backgrounds of the writer. Michel Fabre is right in speculating that toward the end of his life, Wright “was once again going through a period of ideological change which, had its course been completed, might have caused him to start writing in a new vein. It is highly probable the civil rights and Black Power movements would have given him a second wind, had he lived another five years” (Fabre 1973, p. 526—cited under An American Life, 1908–1945: Overviews).
An American Life, 1908–1945
Wright’s early life was filled with strife and struggles caused by racism, which was rampant in American society. He was born on a plantation near Natchez, Mississippi, on 4 September 1908, the first child of Nathan Wright, an illiterate sharecropper, and Ella Wilson, a school teacher and assistant to a white physician. All of his grandparents were born in slavery. His father was born shortly before 1880, the son of Nathaniel Wright, a freed slave who farmed a plot of land he had been given at the end of the Civil War. His maternal grandfather, Richard Wilson, served in the United States Navy in 1865, then became disillusioned because of a bureaucratic error that deprived him of his pension. Wright’s maternal grandmother. of Irish, Scottish, Native American, and African descent, was virtually white in appearance. A house slave before Emancipation, she later became a midwife nurse, a devoted Seventh-day Adventist, and the strict head of her household, which included eight surviving children. Wright’s childhood was saddened because his father deserted his family to live with another woman, leaving them impoverished. The young Wright was always hungry, but he was interested in reading and writing, pursuits encouraged by his literate mother. She suffered a stroke and he was forced to leave school to earn money doing odd jobs. Despite the hardship he endured, he kept up reading and writing. In the winter of 1924, barely nineteen years old, he wrote his first short story, “The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre,” in the Jackson Southern Register. Wright worked for the American Optical Company, cleaning the workshop and making deliveries. In the fall of 1924 he entered the ninth grade at Smith Robertson Junior High School, and he graduated as valedictorian in May 1925. He rejected the graduation speech prepared for him by the principal and instead delivered his own, “The Attributes of Life.” After the graduation, he worked as a delivery boy, sales clerk, hotel hallboy, and bellboy, and in a movie theater. He began classes at the newly founded Lanier High School in the fall, but quit a few weeks later and left Jackson for Memphis, Tennessee. He worked for low pay as a dishwasher and delivery boy and at the Merry Optical Company, as told in Black Boy. Though working long hours, he read widely in Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, The American Mercury, and other magazines.
Overviews
As documented in Black Boy (1945), Wright’s early life was filled with all kinds of personal, familial, and social problems, and the young Wright was determined to battle the racial prejudice rampant in the Deep South. At the same time, he was greatly shocked when his father deserted his family to live with another woman. He also struggled to live under the care of his relatives. Not only did he fight with white boys, but he also took issue with his black friends, who he thought sold their souls and were abused by their white superiors. Despite experiencing such struggles and hardships, both at home and in white society, he was determined to be an activist and a writer, as Webb 1968 and Fabre 1973 describe. After reading an editorial highly critical of H. L. Mencken, long noted as a critic of the white South, Wright sought out Mencken’s Prejudices and A Book of Prefaces and was particularly impressed by Mencken’s iconoclasm and use of “words as weapons.” These books served him as guides to further reading, including works by Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, the elder Alexandre Dumas, Frank Harris, and O. Henry. He went to Chicago during the Depression years, as documented in Kiuchi and Hakutani 2014, where he obtained a job as a postal worker. He devoted his spare time to reading hundreds of books, and was also involved with the Communist movement. He acquired writing skills by attending the John Reed Club, a Communist organization in Chicago. As Kiuchi and Hakutani 2014 documents, Wright attended a series of meetings, in which he met, among others, Frank Marshall Davis, a well-known Communist and activist writer. Wright’s association with leftist writers, as Webb 1968, Fabre 1973, and Rowley 2001 all recount, resulted in his writing Uncle Tom’s Children (1938), which comprises an essay, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” and four short stories: “Big Boy Leaves Home,” “Down by the Riverside,” “Long Black Song,” and “Bright and Morning Star.” As Webb 1968, Fabre 1973, and Rowley 2001 all emphasize, these stories served as seeds and blueprints for Wright’s subsequent works in this period that dealt with racial prejudice in America—Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945) in particular.
Fabre, Michel. The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright. New York: William Morrow, 1973.
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This work was the first complete biography, based on a research Fabre conducted in the United States, as well as on Wright’s papers, manuscripts, and published writings, housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. As a Frenchman, Fabre documented Wright’s associations with his existentialist friends, Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir.
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Kiuchi, Toru, and Yoshinobu Hakutani. Richard Wright: A Documented Chronology, 1908–1960. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014.
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Documents Wright’s daily activities from birth to death. The work also documents Wright’s published and unpublished writings, notes, and correspondences with friends, writers, and politicians. It consists of two parts: “American Life, 1908–1946” and “A Life in Exile, 1946–1960.”
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Rowley, Hazel. Richard Wright: The Life and Times. New York: Henry Holt, 2001.
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This biography features Wright’s most famous novel, Native Son, and equally famous autobiography, Black Boy. Rowley, who was born in London and moved with her parents to Australia, looks unflinchingly at the experience of black manhood. She also comments on Wright’s posthumously published Haiku: This Other World.
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Walker, Margaret. Richard Wright: Demonic Genius. New York: Warner, 1988.
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This biography is unique in that Walker, like Wright, hailed from the Deep South and became a writer in Chicago. She provides an intimate psychological portrait of her fellow writer. Not only was Walker a close friend of Wright’s, but she was also involved in the activities of the Chicago Renaissance. She was associated with the South Side Writers Group, which included leftist African American writers such as Wright, Arna Bontemps, Fenton Johnson, Theodore Ward, and Frank Marshall Davis.
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Webb, Constance. Richard Wright: A Biography. New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1968.
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This biography is a long, passionate account by a personal friend of Wright’s. Despite Webb’s access to Mrs. Wright’s notes, letters, and other original materials, the book lacks the coherence and chronology critics need. Though it provides useful information, it falls far short of a definitive biography of a major writer, such as Mark Shorer’s Sinclair Lewis: An American Life or W. A. Swanberg’s Dreiser.
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Wright, Richard. Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth. New York: Harper, 1945.
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This work is an indispensable source for the study of Wright’s early life in Mississippi and Tennessee. It also describes the stark contrast between his experience in the Deep South and that in Chicago. While the overall portrayal of Wright’s early life is objective, parts of his story are dramatized and fictionalized.
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Race and Racism
Wright’s approach to racial problems in American society was based not only on his personal experience, described in Wright 1945, but also on his historical, sociological, and psychological analysis of the problem, as shown in Wright 1941. Before Wright, the black American writer primarily addressed himself to a black audience. To write for a white audience, the black writer would have been expected to present stereotyped pictures of African Americans. Exceptions such as W. E. B. DuBois and Charles W. Chesnutt went largely unheeded, because “Negroes,” as Wright thought, had strong resistance against the racial issues being presented openly.” Instead, as Bryant 2015 shows, Wright dealt with racial issues in newspaper articles, as well as in fiction. In particular, Wright’s “Big Boy Leaves Home,” which depicts the lynching of an black boy, as Hakutani 1996 notes, was inspired by Theodore Dreiser’s short story, “Nigger Jeff,” based on Dreiser’s newspaper article (1898). Both black and white people read Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945), in which Wright destroyed the white myth of the patient, humorous, subservient black man. Another insight Wright made in Black Boy (Wright 1945) was the fact that racism was caused not only by white prejudice but also by a black inferiority complex. Racial oppression, as he demonstrated in his writings, should be destroyed if the black person gained strength of character and confidence in the self, as shown in Wright 1945. The opposite of such a character was shown by Shorty in Black Boy, who earns a quarter by having his bottom kicked by a white man as an entertainment. Before writing Black Boy, Wright was interested in a sociological study of racism. He came upon Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (Myrdal 1944). Unlike Ralph Ellison, who also read Myrdal’s book, Wright was persuaded by Myrdal’s premise that blackness in American culture was the result of white oppression. Myrdal tried to demonstrate that this blackness was a distorted development and a pathological condition of American culture. Myrdal posited that, while European Americans resolved the problems of race, African Americans would be assimilated into American culture. By 1945, attempting to reinvent himself from a post-Marxist point of view, Wright agreed with Myrdal in rejecting a Marxist analysis of racial problems in America. As his introduction to St. Clair Drake’s and Horace Cayton’s Black Metropolis (1945) indicates, Wright supported Myrdal’s observations of African American culture: a large African American population is defeated by its brutal experience in the industrial North.
Bryant, Earle V., ed. Byline, Richard Wright: Articles from the Daily Worker and New Masses. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2015.
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From 1937 to 1938, Wright turned out more than two hundred articles for the Daily Worker. They covered most of the major and minor events, personalities, and issues of race, percolating through the local, national, and global scenes in the late 1930s. Because the Daily Worker wasn’t a mainstream paper, editors gave Wright free rein to cover the stories he wanted, and he tackled issues that no one else covered.
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Hakutani, Yoshinobu. Richard Wright and Racial Discourse. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996.
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The study provides a critical analysis of each of Wright’s major works, focusing on the racial issues that underlie them. Native Son proves, as a racial discourse, that because Bigger Thomas is black, he accidentally kills a white girl and intentionally murders his black girlfriend. To Wright, Bigger is a victim of white racism. Wright’s argument is that society, not the individual, is responsible for his crime.
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Myrdal, Gunnar. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problems and American Democracy. 2 vols. New York: Harper, 1944.
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Myrdal was a Swedish Nobel-laureate economist, sociologist, and politician. In 1974 he received the Nobel Prize with Friedrich Hayek for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social, and institutional phenomena. He is best known in the United States for his study of race relations, which culminated in this book. The study was influential in the 1954 landmark US Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education.
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Wright, Richard. 12 Million Black Voices. New York: Viking, 1941.
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This work anticipates Black Boy, since it shows Wright’s personal reaction to life in the South and immigration to the North. The chief difference between the two books is that in this book Wright identifies his voice with that of the black masses, whereas in Black Boy the masses are his enemy. Wright argues that the black experience from the family-oriented tribal life to city life represents the American experience.
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Wright, Richard. Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth. New York: Harper, 1945.
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This work is an indispensable source for the study of Wright’s early life in the Deep South. It also describes the stark contrast between his experience in the South and in the North. While the overall portrayal of Wright’s early life is objective, parts of it are dramatized and fictionalized. Besides describing his early life, this work analyzes not only white racism but also the black inferiority complex.
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Naturalism
It has generally been taken for granted that Wright was schooled in American literary naturalism. In Black Boy, as shown in Kinnamon and Fabre 1993, Wright states how he was inspired by Theodore Dreiser’s Jennie Gerhardt and Sister Carrie. He also remarks that all his life shaped him for the realism, the naturalism of the modern novel. Because Sister Carrie is not the portrait of a suffering woman, Wright must have been impressed with Jennie Gerhardt, a story of an enduring woman who fights against the prejudices of class and gender. Wright’s affinity with Dreiser has conventionally been understood in terms of naturalism, but Kinnamon and Fabre 1993 reveals that Wright never considered himself a naturalist. That he made no distinction between realism and naturalism suggests a predilection for fiction that mirrors social reality, for writing that not only expresses the sentiments of the socially oppressed but also deals with the unalloyed feelings of individuals representative of those of others. This objectivity on the part of the writer, which Wright deemed the most difficult to achieve, constitutes what he called “perspective” and “intellectual space,” the twin elements indispensable to his narrative. To what extent he is part of American naturalism has become one of the central questions about his work. In Native Son, for instance, does he subscribe to the novel’s implicit assumption that American social conditions are directly responsible for the degradation of black people? Contemporary criticism has modified or refuted this assumption, suggesting, as Fabre 1975 and Hakutani and Fried 1975 do, that Wright went beyond naturalism. Although Wright was familiar with Zola 1963 and read Zola’s novels, Kinnamon and Fabre 1993 shows that he thought the environment of a Zolaesque character is vastly different from that of an African American character. The pessimistic determinism often associated with literary naturalism, as Becker 1963 documents, had taught the young Wright the meaning of racial oppression. A victim of oppression himself, Wright by necessity directed his energy toward rebellion. While he escaped the pessimistic outlook of naturalism, his respect for the philosophy helped him develop his own individualism and endow his characters with self-determination. As Wright moved beyond anger and protest, he developed a new concern for character and literary discipline, seeking a deeper involvement in the world of art and philosophy. Naturalism showed him how to determine human beings’ conditions in the world. Existentialism inspired him to liberate them from the strictures imposed on them.
Becker, George J., ed. Documents of Modern Literary Realism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963.
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A collection of historical essays on modern literary realism, with an introduction. It includes essays by American realists such as William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Theodore Dreiser. Becker defines the genesis of realism in Europe and its development in America. Making a distinction between realism and naturalism, he cites Emil Zola’s theoretical essay “The Experimental Novel.”
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Fabre, Michel. “Richard Wright beyond Naturalism.” In American Literary Naturalism: A Reassessment. Edited by Yoshinobu Hakutani and Lewis Fried, 136–153. Heidelberg, Germany: Carl Winter Üniversitätsverlag, 1975.
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Fabre, the foremost biographer of Richard Wright, observes that Wright was familiar with Zola’s theory of naturalism, but that he did not apply Zola’s notion of heredity and environment. Fabre’s argument is that, unlike Zola’s naturalistic victim, Wright’s hero has the capacity to transcend the deterministic forces of society. To Fabre, Wright went beyond the formalist theory and practice of naturalism, suggesting Wright was drawn to existentialism.
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Hakutani, Yoshinobu, and Lewis Fried, eds. American Literary Naturalism: A Reassessment. Heidelberg, Germany: Carl Winter Üniversitätsverlag, 1975.
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A collection of critical and historical essays that reexamine the major works of American novelists such as Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Richard Wright. Each of the novelists is labeled with a variety of literary terms. Norris is regarded as a romantic naturalist, Crane as an impressionistic naturalist, Dreiser as a modernistic naturalist, and Wright as an existentialist.
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Kinnamon, Keneth, and Michel Fabre, eds. Conversations with Richard Wright. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993.
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A collection of interviews in which Wright commented on many American and European writers. He said that he was inspired by Theodore Dreiser, whom he considered the greatest American novelist, and Jennie Gerhardt the greatest American novel. To Wright, Dreiser stood for America on a par with Dostoyevsky for Russia. In Black Boy, Wright acknowledges that he leaned how to describe American life from Dreiser.
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Zola, Emile. “The Experimental Novel.” In Documents of Modern Literary Realism. Edited by George J. Becker, 162–196. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963.
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In this essay, first published in 1893, Zola demonstrates that writing a novel is similar to conducting a scientific experiment. He theorizes that a person’s actions are determined by the person’s heredity, social environment, and temperament, and that these three determinants are beyond the person’s control. In such an experiment, the novelist finds a character with certain hereditary and temperamental information, places the character in an actual social environment, and describes the person’s actions.
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Theory of Writing
“Blueprint for Negro Writing” (Wright 1978), first published in 1937, was Wright’s most important literary manifesto in his early career. Arguing that what enables his narrative to convey the truths of the African American experience is not an application of literary naturalism but a creation of perspective, he posits a theory of African American narrative. This narrative, whether in fiction or in nonfiction, must be based on fact and history and cannot be motivated by politics or idealism. The perspective is “that part of a poem, novel, or play which a writer never puts directly upon paper. It is that fixed point in intellectual space where a writer stands to view the struggles, hopes, and sufferings of his people” (p. 45). Substantiating this perspective with “intellectual space,” Wright further posits that perspective must not be allied with “world movements” and must be established by the self. Because perspective is “something which he wins through his living,” it is “the most difficult of achievement” (pp. 45–46). This intellectual space, as noted by Hakutani 1996, comprises, on the one hand, a writer’s complex consciousness deeply involved in African American experience and, on the other, a detachment from it. By a detachment Wright means a reflection accomplished in isolation, in a space where neither those afflicted nor those sympathetic to their plight, such as Marxists, are allowed to enter. In American Hunger (1977), Wright recalls, “Writing had to be done in loneliness” (p. 123). In describing African Americans’ struggles, sufferings, and dreams, Wright acquired a narrative technique from Dreiser, the technique of making up all these voices of African Americans into what Bakhtin called “a microcosm of heteroglossia” (Bakhtin 1981, p. 411). The voices of the young Wright in Black Boy and Bigger Thomas in Native Son are not merely theirs, but they also represent those of other black boys. The hero or heroine in Dreiser’s or Wright’s novel, as Hakutani 2006 notes, is not an already complete person but a changing, evolving, and developing one. The protagonist’s character thrives on the novelist’s dialogic imagination as it is derived from the clashing interactions between the person and the others who inhabit society. Wright’s writing is productive, as is Dreiser’s, because it shows the object of representation in a new light to reveal new ideas and dimensions, while at the same time illuminating the conventional worldview.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. The Dialogic Imagination. Edited by Michael Holquist. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
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The posthumous publication of Bakhtin’s theory and practice on novelistic discourse. Bakhtin theorized that objects and ideas depicted and expressed in a novel by the individual derive from dialogue with others in society. Bakhtin’s theory has an affinity with Lacan’s theory of the subject, who is always subjected to the domain of others. For Bakhtin, the individual’s ideas and visions expressed in a novel are influenced, modified, and determined by those of others.
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Hakutani, Yoshinobu. Richard Wright and Racial Discourse. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996.
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The study provides a critical analysis of each of Wright’s major works, focusing on the racial issues that underlie the works. For example, Black Boy with a preface, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” narrates the young Wright’s experience, also conveying those of other black boys. As this essay demonstrates, the observations and ideas expressed by Wright are not only personal but objective and reflective of those of other black boys.
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Hakutani, Yoshinobu. Cross-Cultural Visions in African American Modernism: From Spatial Narrative to Jazz Haiku. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006.
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Some works by modern African American writers (e.g. Wright, Ellison, Baldwin, Alice Walker, Morrison) thrive on cross-cultural visions and ideas described and expressed. The spatial narrative in Black Boy that describes black culture has an affinity with that in Dreiser’s Jennie Gerhardt, which describes immigrant culture. James Emanuel’s Jazz from the Haiku King (1999) is a conflation of jazz, an African American genre of music, and haiku, a Japanese genre of poetry.
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Wright, Richard. “Blueprint for Negro Writing.” In Richard Wright Reader. Edited by Ellen Wright and Michel Fabre, 36–49. New York: Harper and Row, 1978.
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The essay, originally published in New Challenge in 1937, states Wright’s theory and practice of African American writing. This writing, he argues, must be based on fact and history. Not only is it objective and factual, but it must not be influenced by world politics, philosophies, religions, and literary movements. As he states in American Hunger, “Writing had to be done in loneliness” (p. 123).
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Reviews and Criticism
The reviews that Wright’s earlier works—Uncle Tom’s Children (1938), Native Son (1940), 12 Million Black Voices (1941), Black Boy (1945), Lawd Today (1963), American Hunger (1977)—received were mostly positive. Native Son and Black Boy received numerous and highly supportive reviews. Native Son, Wright’s first novel, achieved phenomenal success with critics as well as readers. As a Book-of-the-Month Club selection it became at once a best seller, a popularity accorded to no other African American novelist before him. The most controversial criticism of Native Son was James Baldwin’s. In Baldwin 1951 (cited under Native Son (1940)), he adamantly opposed Wright’s characterization of Bigger as a monster who does not embody a true black feeling. To Baldwin, Bigger is a misrepresentation of the black person because he has no relationship to himself, black people, or any other people. The serious limitation Baldwin saw in Bigger’s character is not Wright’s use of Bigger as a symbol, but the absence of the social and human relations that underlie that symbol. Trying to distil the essence of Bigger’s character, Kinnamon 1969 (cited under Native Son (1940)) traces in substantial detail the personal, social, and human experiences reflected in the novel. Black Boy, regarded as one of the greatest autobiographies in American literature, was celebrated by all critics and fellow writers as an American classic. Sinclair Lewis, Lewis, writing for Esquire in 1945, entitled his brief review “Gentlemen, This Is Revolution.” Of all reviews, Lionel Trilling’s “A Tragic Situation” was the most thorough. Granted, Black Boy is an accurate account of misery and oppression, but in Trilling 1945 (cited under Black Boy (1945)) he maintained that the book does not let its readers make their moral escape offered by his accounts of suffering and oppression. To Trilling, what underlies the power and effect of the book is not Wright’s personal experience, but his moral and intellectual power. Trilling suggested that Wright “does not make himself that different kind of human being, a ‘sufferer.’ He is not an object, he is a subject; he is in the same kind of person as his reader, as complex, as free” (pp. 391–392). The earliest book-length critical study was Edward Margolies’s The Art of Richard Wright (Margolies 1969, cited under Uncle Tom’s Children (1938) and other sections). Unlike some critics who regarded as merely a proletarian writer, Margolies successfully demonstrates Wright’s themes of fear and alienation, though he admits that Wright seldom achieved his fullest measure of artistic promise. Another earlier criticism was Keneth Kinnamon’s The Emergence of Richard Wright (Kinnamon 1972, cited under Black Boy (1945)). Kinnamon explains convincingly that Wright faced more formidable obstacles in his youth than any other American writer. Referring to Black Boy, Kinnamon carefully demonstrates how Wright converted his anger to creativity.
Uncle Tom’s Children (1938)
The initial critical reception of Uncle Tom’s Children, Wright’s first work of fiction, was generally favorable. In Farrell 1938, James T. Farrell, a well-known contemporary novelist and an advocate of Wright, praised his realistic style as a departure from a fancy, unrealistic style of writing present in some contemporary fiction. In response to such reviewers as Granville Hicks and Alan Calmer, who wanted Wright to pace more steadily in his narrative and delve more deeply into his material, Farrell argued that Wright effectively employs simple dialogue in advancing his narrative and characterization. Most reviewers, both black and white, praised Wright’s first work of fiction without reservation. Many critics were impressed by Wright’s language and art (see, for example, Cooke 1938, Van Gelder 1938, and Maxwell 1938). Both Van Gelder 1938 and Poore 1938, however, were antagonistic to Wright’s racial views. As if in return for Wright’s unfavorable review of her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, labeled Uncle Tom’s Children a chronicle of hatred with no way of understanding and sympathy (Hurston 1938). Hurston was highly critical of Wright’s short stories, claiming they fail to depict the truths of African American life. Later estimates of the collection were highly favorable, however. In a chapter on Uncle Tom’s Children and Eight Men, a later collection of stories, Margolies 1969, for example, appreciates Wright’s use of Marxism in Uncle Tom’s Children for didactic purposes. Margolies concludes his study by pointing out the sweep and magnitude of Wright’s stories, filled with the author’s impassioned convictions about the dignity of human beings. That the dignity of human beings is a central issue in Wright’s fiction is echoed by a black critic’s analysis of “Big Boy Leaves Home.” Jackson 1971 reads the lynching of Bobo as a signifier of the ultimate indignity that can be inflicted upon a human being. Giles 1973, on the other hand, expresses reservations, calling Uncle Tom’s Children a “successful failure.” Not surprisingly, the estimates of individual stories in the collection vary widely among the critics.
Cooke, Marvel. “Prize Novellas, Brave Stories.” New York Amsterdam News, 9 April 1938: 16M.
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Considers Wright’s use of black dialect to be superb.
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Farrell, James T. “Lynch Patterns.” Partisan Review 4 (May 1938): 57–58.
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Appreciative of Wright’s direct and realistic style, Farrell remarks that Uncle Tom’s Children serves as an exemplary refutation for those who wished to write “such fancy nonsense about fables and allegories” (p. 57).
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Giles, James R. “Richard Wright’s Successful Failure: A New Look at Uncle Tom’s Children.” Phylon 34 (Fall 1973): 256–266.
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Giles detects a shift from Wright’s concerns with youth and adults who meet lonely deaths to his treatment of Sue in “Bright and Morning Star,” who dies a martyr loyal to communism, and triumphs over all the racists that have oppressed the characters in the first four short stories.
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Hurston, Zora Neale. “Stories of Conflict.” Saturday Review of Literature 17 (2 April 1938): 32.
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Hurston categorizes Uncle Tom’s Children as a chronicle of hatred with no act of understanding and sympathy. She, too, opposes Wright’s politics, arguing that his stories fail to touch the fundamental truths of African American life.
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Jackson, Blyden. “Richard Wright in a Moment of Truth.” Southern Literary Journal 3 (Spring 1971): 3–17.
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Jackson, a black critic, explains that “Big Boy Leaves Home,” instead of showing the quality of the black will to survive suppression, demonstrates the lynching of Bobo as a symbolic rite of castigation, the ultimate indignity white racism can inflict upon an individual.
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Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.
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Margolies observes that one of the successes of Uncle Tom’s Children is Wright’s use of Marxism for didactic purposes. Portraying conflicts that are true to the facts of life in the South, his stories usually succeed by their integration of plot, imagery, character, and theme.
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Maxwell, Allen. “Review of Uncle Tom’s Children.” Southern Review 23 (April 1938): 362–365.
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Likens Wright’s style to Steinbeck’s.
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Poore, Charles. “Review of Uncle Tom’s Children.” New York Times (2 April 1938).
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Poore is antagonistic to Wright’s racial views.
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Van Gelder, Robert. “Four Tragic Tales.” New York Times Book Review (13 April 1938): 7, 16.
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Van Gelder compares Wright to Hemingway.
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Native Son (1940)
Native Son, Wright’s first novel, achieved phenomenal success with critics as well as readers. As a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection it became at once a best-seller, a popularity accorded to no other African American novelist before him. A decade after the publication of Native Son, Irving Howe, an eminent critic, became Wright’s champion. Howe 1963 declared that the appearance of Native Son changed American culture forever. The favorable reviews are too numerous to mention. Significantly, Native Son received unanimously sympathetic attention from leftist publications like New Masses. Some of the well-known reviewers, however, expressed reservations. Malcolm Cowley, generally very positive about the novel, deplored Max’s courtroom plea for Bigger’s life as thematically weakening (Cowley 1940). Daiches 1940, by a British critic who recognized the validity of Bigger’s action, objected to Wright’s attempt to prove a normal thesis by an abnormal plot. The most controversial view of Native Son was James Baldwin’s “Many Thousands Gone” (Baldwin 1951). The serious limitation Baldwin sees in Bigger’s character is not Wright’s use of Bigger as a symbol, but the absence of the social and human relations that underlie that symbol. Kinnamon 1969 tries to fill in what Baldwin failed to discover by tracing in substantial detail the personal, social, and human experiences reflected in the novel. Partly in response to Baldwin’s criticism, Gibson 1969 reads Native Son as psychological rather than social fiction. Critics of Native Son have not neglected to study Wright’s technique and style. Emanuel 1968, by an African American poet, demonstrates that Bigger’s consciousness is depicted in a series of images such as those of light, dark, and blurs. Nagel 1969 observes that the most significant artistic element is Wright’s use of the imagery of blindness. Several reviewers, when the book appeared, compared Native Son with Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. Hakutani 1979 tries to show that despite the same theme and technique shared by both novels, they portray two fundamentally different characters. Joyce 1986 argues that the power of the book derives from Wright’s artistic use of figurative language and dialectic imagery.
Baldwin, James. “Many Thousands Gone.” Partisan Review 18 (November–December 1951): 665–680.
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Baldwin adamantly opposes Wright’s characterization of Bigger as a monster who does not embody a true black feeling. To Baldwin, Bigger is a misrepresentation of the black person because he has no recognizable relationships to himself, to his life, to his fellow African Americans, or to any other people. His force derives not from his significance as a human being, but from his significance as a myth.
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Cowley, Malcolm. Review of Native Son. New Republic 102 (18 March 1940): 382–383.
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With respect to the third part of the novel, Cowley asserts that this part is the best, for Bigger Thomas as an individual is not Wright’s deepest concern. Rather, Wright has a larger mission: he speaks for and to the nation not as an African American but as a moral crusader. To Cowley, Native Son is more powerful than any other book by an African American.
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Daiches, David. “The American Scene.” Partisan Review 7 (May–June 1940): 245.
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Daiches recognizes the validity of Bigger’s action but objects to Wright’s attempt to prove a normal thesis by an abnormal plot. Daiches sees as pure melodrama a plot that involves the hero’s hacking off the head of an innocent white girl, sticking her body into the furnace, and bashing the head of his black girlfriend; consequently, the novel as a valid interpretation of life unnecessarily suffers.
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Emanuel, James A. “Fever and Feeling: Notes on the Imaginary in Native Son.” Negro Digest 18 (December 1968): 16–24.
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Emanuel, an African American poet and musician, demonstrates that Bigger’s consciousness of life is presented in a series of images such as those of light, dark, blurs, closure, walls, and curtains.
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Gibson, Donald. “Wright’s Invisible Native Son.” American Quarterly 21 (Winter 1969): 728–738.
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Gibson reads the novel as psychological rather than social fiction. While Baldwin says Max’s speech at the end of the novel fails to clarify Bigger’s humanity, the relationships to himself, as well as to his fellow African and European Americans, Gibson, citing quotations from Book III, shows that at the end of the book Bigger is trying to come to terms with himself rather than with society.
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Hakutani, Yoshinobu. “Native Son and An American Tragedy: Two Different Interpretations of Crime and Guilt.” Centennial Review 23 (Spring 1979): 208–226.
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Both novels convince their readers that the crimes they dramatize are the inevitable products of American society, and that both protagonists are morally free from guilt. The novels, however, portray two fundamentally different characters. Clyde is not only a victim of society, but also a victim of his own illusions about life. Bigger is a naive character but has learned through his murders how to exercise his will and redeemed himself.
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Howe, Irving. “Black Boys and Native Sons.” Dissent 10 (Autumn 1963): 353–368.
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Howe, one of the most eminent critics of modern American literature in the 20th century, declared that when Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever. Howe notes that Native Son destroyed once and for all the misconception of white readers who had seen the African American as peculiarly endowed to bear the burdens and suffer the shame of prejudice without anger, bitterness, and essential humanity.
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Joyce, Joyce Ann. Richard Wright’s Art of Tragedy. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986.
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Although the power of Native Son derives from the fierce battle Bigger Thomas wages against a racist society, the impact of the tragedy on the reader comes directly from its language. Instead of monolithically characterizing Bigger as a victim of his racist environment, Wright amply succeeds in portraying him in terms of dialectical images and ideas: sun and snow, black and white, hero and murderer, fear and blindness, humiliation and insensitivity.
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Kinnamon, Keneth. “Native Son: The Personal, Social, and Political Background.” Phylon 30 (Spring 1969): 66–72.
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Trying to distill the essence of Bigger’s character, Kinnamon traces in substantial detail the personal, social, and human experiences reflected in the novel. The character of Bigger is a composite of many individual black men Wright knew in his life. Bigger’s pattern of fear and frustration is supported by the sociological research of his sociologist friend Horace R. Cayton, as well as the Robert Nixon case.
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Nagel, James. “Images of ‘Vision’ in Native Son.” University Review 36 (December 1969): 109–115.
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Nagel observes that the novel is not only a solid sociological study of black life in the United States, but also a work of art that transcends the limitation of sociological prose. The most significant artistic element is Wright’s use of the imagery of blindness. Through his killing of a white girl, Bigger is able to see himself as an individual; this scene becomes the turning point of recognition in classic drama.
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12 Million Black Voices (1941)
In “Richard Wright’s Powerful Narrative” (1941), an anonymous reviewer found great value in Wright’s painstaking retrospect on the neglected race in America”). Horace Cayton, an African American sociologist and Wright’s close friend, defined the book as a counterpart to Native Son, for it describes the habit, the milieu, the social matrix from which Bigger Thomas emerged (Cayton 1941). L. D. Reddick, also an African American, found the significant parallels between the Jewish and black people (Reddick 1942). Most black reviewers for white audiences were not as enthusiastic as Cayton and Reddick. Streator 1941 objected to Wright’s predominantly Marxian voice in the book. Charles Muntz, another black reviewer, considered the book not a folk history of black people in the United State as the subtitle suggests, but a manifesto declaring the arrival of “the New Negro,” or “the Embattled Negro,” at the gate of Uncle Tom (Muntz 1941). The only notable critical analysis of the book is provided in Margolies 1969, which reads the work not as a historical document, but as a prose-poem portrayal of simple folk told in their own voice.
Cayton, Horace R. “Wright’s New Book More Than a Study of Social Status.” Pittsburgh Courier, 15 November 1941.
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Cayton, Wright’s sociologist friend, defines the book as a counterpart to Native Son in that it describes the habits, the milieu, and the socialist matrix from which the personage of Bigger Thomas emerged.
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Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.
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The difference between this book and Black Boy is that in this book Wright identifies his voice with that of the black masses, whereas in Black Boy the masses are unconsciously his enemy. Wright’s thesis is that the black experience, from the family-oriented tribal life to city life, represents the American experience, suggesting if black people in America perish, America will perish, because the black experience in America is what America is.
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Muntz, Charles Curtis. “The Negro.” The Nation 153 (13 December 1941): 620.
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Muntz interprets the book not as a folk history of black people in the United States, as the subtitle suggests, but as a manifesto declaring that “the Embattled Negro” has arrived and now stands at the grave of Uncle Tom.
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Reddick, L. D. “Negro and Jew.” The Jewish Survey 2 (January 1942): 25.
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Reddick, a black critic, reminds readers of the significant parallels between the Jewish people and black people: “Black folk from Georgia appreciate the Jewish Crow of German Jews” (p. 25).
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“Richard Wright’s Powerful Narrative Beautifully Illustrated in New Book.” Sunday Worker, 9 November 1941: 22.
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The reviewer appreciates Wright’s carefully researched documents that underline the book, and says it presents a great writer’s retrospect on the neglected race in America at a time when the nation was devoting her energy to world politics.
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Streator, George. Review of 12 Million Black Voices. Commonweal 25 (28 November 1941): 147–148.
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Streater objects to Wright’s predominantly Marxian voice in the book, charging that “Mr. Wright speaks words related to Toussaint L’Ouverture and the black slaughter of whites and mulattoes in Haiti that marked the first sharp break between the New World and the Old.” Streator, “a plain light-skinned Negro of legally married light-skinned Negro parentage” (p. 147), seems to abhor even the slight hint of racial separation in the book.
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Black Boy (1945)
Favorable reactions to Black Boy were expressed by several of the black reviewers and critics. Wright’s sociologist friend and advocate Horace Cayton, in an extended essay titled “Frightened Children of Frightened Parents” (Cayton 1945), praised his mastery of the tools of school psychology in covering the debased masses of black people. The black critic George Streator, who was critical of the concept of racial separatism in 12 Million Black Voices, was highly impressed by Wright’s unique power in telling African Americans, American Jews, and Irish Catholics what oppression means (Streator 1945). Hugh Gloster, one of the pioneer black scholars and critics, praised the book not only as one of the greatest American autobiographies, but also as a sociological document (Gloster 1948). W. E. B. DuBois, another eminent black scholar, thought Black was fictional and unconvincing as an autobiography (DuBois 1945). Beatrice Murphy, a well-known advocate of black people, quibbled that the power of pen Wright boasted in the autobiography was used in turn as a sword to stab his own people (Murphy 1945). Other critics were unanimous in celebrating Wright’s extraordinary achievement in Black Boy, not merely as a record of his early life, but as a work of art. Ellison 1945 demonstrates that Wright’s depiction of black fears is grounded in the Blues. Trilling 1945 is not only convinced of Wright’s accurate account of misery and oppression, but also impressed by his moral and intellectual power. Later critics have been ecstatically appreciative of Wright’s power in Black Boy. Reilly 1971 reads the book as an artistic creation of self-image rather than a realistic record of his youth. Kinnamon 1972, with well-annotated evidence, accounts for Wright’s extraordinary accomplishment in writing Black Boy. Hakutani 1996 reads the book, one of the greatest autobiographies ever written in America, as a superb self-portrait that thrives in creating the self. Hakutani also shows that Black Boy serves as a cultural document and as a social criticism. Not only is Wright critical of white racism, he is also critical of the black inferiority complex.
Cayton, Horace. “Frightened Children of Frightened Parents.” Twice-a-Year 12–13 (Spring–Summer/Fall–Winter 1945): 262–269.
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Cayton, a sociologist, analyzes the plight of the masses of the African American people. Defending the debased masses of African Americans, he carefully introduces the device of the “lords of the land” and contrasts it with the “bosses of the buildings.” He thus translates into literary forms the popular types of social organization: the anthropological theory of Robert Redfield and the sociological theory of Louis Wirth.
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DuBois, W. E. B. “Richard Wright Looks Back.” New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review, 4 March 1945: 2.
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DuBois, an eminent black scholar, finds Black Boy to be fiction rather than simply a record of life. While parts of Wright’s story seem autobiographical and believable, the total picture is utterly unconvincing.
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Ellison, Ralph. “Richard Wright’s Blues.” Antioch Review 5 (June 1945): 198–211.
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Ellison demonstrates that Wright’s depiction of black fears is grounded in the blues. To Ellison, black people repressed their individuality as a defense mechanism to counter white reprisals. Wright’s assertion means that the black sensibility is socially and historically conditioned, and that African Americans must confront and win Western culture. His stories, taking the form of the blues, express both the agony of life and its transcendence through toughness of spirit.
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Gloster, Hugh M. Negro Voices in American Fiction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948.
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Gloster, one of the pioneer black scholars and critics, underscores both Wright’s sociological concerns and artistic sensibility in Black Boy.
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Hakutani, Yoshinobu. Richard Wright and Racial Discourse. Columbia: University of Missouri, 1996.
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Hakutani considers Black Boy one of the three greatest American autobiographies. Each autobiography uses the ethnicity of the self that enables the protagonist to succeed in life. Black Boy thrives on the young Wright’s battle against racism. It portrays the struggles of an African American youth as do Dreiser’s Dawn those of a son of German immigrants and Franklin’s Autobiography those of a youth of colonial Philadelphia.
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Kinnamon, Keneth. The Emergence of Richard Wright. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972.
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With well-annotated evidence, Kinnamon accounts for Wright’s extraordinary accomplishment in writing Black Boy. Referring to the emotional depravity the young Wright felt in his fanatically religious family and racially prejudiced community, as well as the occasional release he felt in reading fiction, Kinnamon carefully demonstrates how Wright converted his anger to creativity.
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Murphy, Beatrice M. Review of Black Boy. Pulse 3 (April 1945): 32–33.
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Murphy quibbles that the power of pen Wright boasted in the autobiography was used in Black Boy to criticize the weakness of black character. Murphy’s objection to the book as autobiography is also based on various discrepancies she found between Wright’s accounts in the book and “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow.”
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Reilly, John M. “Self-Portraits by Richard Wright.” Colorado Quarterly 20 (Summer 1971): 31–45.
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Reilly, a white scholar and critic, analyzes Black Boy as Wright’s attempt to create a self-image rather than as a realistic record of his youth. Reilly also demonstrates that the young Richard Wright, the protagonist of Black Boy, serves not only as a self-image but as an objective representation of black boys.
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Streator, George. Review of Black Boy. Commonweal 46 (23 March 1945): 568–569.
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Streator, who had earlier opposed the concept of racial separation in 12 Billion Black Voices, appreciates Black Boy for Wright’s unique power in telling American blacks, American Jews, and Irish Catholics what real oppression means. In Streator’s assessment, the book’s chief value lies in leading the nation on the road to emancipation.
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Trilling, Lionel. “A Tragic Situation.” The Nation 160 (7 April 1945): 391–392.
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Trilling argues that what underlies the power and effect of the book is not Wright’s personal experience, but his moral and intellectual power. Trilling suggests that Wright does not make himself that different kind of human being. To Trilling, Wright is not an object but a subject: “he is in the same kind of person as his reader, as complex, as free” (p. 392).
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Lawd Today (1963)
Although Lawd Today was written first but published last, this posthumous novel received many reviews, both favorable and unfavorable, and some critical attention. Hicks 1963 affectionately defended the novel, calling it less powerful than Native Son and Black Boy, but uniquely interesting. In general, those opposed to naturalism in modern fiction were not appreciative of Lawd Today. Nick Aaron Ford, a black critic, objected to Wright’s concept as well as technique, and found the novel melodramatic and disorganized (Ford 1964). Lewis Gannet found Lawd Today monotonous and unsubtle (Gannet 1963). Doris Grumbach, a woman critic, agreed with Gannet that it is marred by excessive realism (Grumbach 1963). Even though the theme of the novel is directly related to the author’s racial views, Lawd Today has failed to attract sufficient critical attention. Margolies 1969 considers Jake Jackson an interesting antihero, while Kinnamon 1969 finds Jake’s Chicago environment authentic. Critics generally agree on Wright’s realistic presentation of detail. Fabre 1973 finds that Wright’s own experiences in Chicago closely correspond to those described in the novel. Reilly 1971 argues that Wright found naturalism as a technique inadequate for his narrative. The most sympathetic, but revealing, study is Leary 1972. Leary persuasively argues Wright’s apprentice novel is a superb narrative that portrays human life in urban society with humor.
Fabre, Michel. The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright. New York: William Morrow, 1973.
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Fabre shows that Wright’s own experiences in Chicago as a holder of menial jobs and later as a postal worker closely correspond to those in the novel.
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Ford, Nick Aaron. “The Fire Next Time?: A Critical Survey of Belles Letters by and about Negroes Published in 1963.” Phylon 25 (Summer 1964): 129–130.
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Ford, a black critic, cannot believe that Lawd Today was written by Richard Wright. Objecting to Wright’s concept as well as his technique, Ford deplores the book’s melodramatic and disjoined pattern “with a multitude of hackneyed episodes” (p. 129).
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Gannet, Lewis. Review of Lawd Today. New York Herald Tribune Books, 5 May 1963: 10.
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Gannett thinks that the novel lacks the tension of Native Son because of its monotonous and overdrawn dialogue and absence of overtones.
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Grumbach, Doris. Review of Lawd Today. The Critic 121 (June–July 1963): 82.
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Grumbach, while recognizing Wright’s painfully direct and honest rendition of a racial victim, faults Wright’s excessive use of realism.
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Hicks, Granville. “Dreiser to Farrell to Wright.” Saturday Review 46 (30 March 1963): 37–38.
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What interests Hicks is that although Wright was an avowed Communist at the time he wrote the novel, he did not make a Communist out of Jake Jackson. Jake even despises communism, but he also refuses to become a victim of the capitalist system. He is delineated as uneducated, frustrated, and fumbling. Hicks thus agrees with James Baldwin’s observation that Wright’s ability is to convey inward feelings by external events.
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Kinnamon, Keneth. “The Pastoral Impulse in Richard Wright.” Midcontinental American Studies Journal 10 (Spring 1969): 41–47.
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Kinnamon praises Wright’s realistic portrait of black life in Chicago’s South Side in the Depression years, but maintains that the novel is flawed by its failure to integrate social themes into Jake’s story.
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Leary, Lewis. “Lawd Today: Notes on Richard Wright’s First/Last novel.” CLA Journal 15 (June 1972): 411–420.
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Leary persuasively argues that Lawd Today, though an apprentice work, is a superb novel that portrays accurately and humorously what human life in urban society is. Much like George F. Babbitt and Studs Lonigan before him, Jake Jackson is caught between vague dreams and actual events. Wright’s hero is neither black nor white; he is a symbol of all men.
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Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.
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Margolies regards the novel as an interesting treatment of the antihero. What is interesting to Margolies is that, ironically, Jake Jackson, an uneducated counterpart of Richard Wright, is not aware that he is an antihero.
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Reilly, John M. “Lawd Today: Richard Wright’s Experiment in Naturalism.” Studies in Black Literature 2 (Autumn 1971): 14–17.
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Reilly suggests that in writing Lawd Today, Wright found literary naturalism, as a philosophy and a technique, inadequate. For one thing, Reilly argues, the theoretical components of heredity, social environment, and temperament that make up naturalism do not apply to the case of Jake Jackson.
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American Hunger (1977)
American Hunger describes Wright’s involvement with the Communist Party in Chicago in the late 1930s. Wright intended to include it in Black Boy, but decided to leave it out. It was published as a separate book in 1977. In 1991 it was included in Later Works, and in 1993 it was published as Part II in a new edition, Black Boy (American Hunger). Most of the reviewers of the 1977 edition of American Hunger regarded it as a record of Richard Wright as an emerging artist. Michael Harrington, an African American socialist and activist, considered the book artistic and psychological rather than political (Harrington 1977). Bob Greenlee was impressed by the book, feeling that it captured the spirit of the times (Greenlee 1977). While American Hunger was interpreted as the artist’s self-portrait, it also cast light on Wright’s relations with the Communist Party in Chicago in the Depression years. Harrington noted that Wright’s break with the Communist Party was caused by his fellow Communists’ inability to treat him as a writer. Walker 1977 argues that the ending of American Hunger sounds cynical, whereas that of Black Boy offers the promise of success. Breitman 1977 noted that Wright and the Communists were both to blame for the frictions between them. Likewise, Jack Conroy, Wright’s contemporary writer and friend in Chicago, also noted that the sign of hope given at the end of Black Boy has disappeared in American Hunger. Fabre 1977, the afterword to the 1977 edition, also notes the contrast between the hopeful Black Boy and the gloomy American Hunger. Moore 1977 emphasizes Wright’s alienation from the black community and his involvement with the Communists.
Breitman, George. International Socialist Review 38 (5 August 1977): 12.
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Breitman notes that Wright then had a peculiar personality, and that the frictions between him and the Communist Party were caused by both sides.
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Conroy, Jack. Review of American Hunger. Kansas City Star, 15 May 1977: D1–D2.
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Conroy observes that the sign of hope pervading the ending of Black Boy as his friend and contemporary enters the promised land of Chicago has disappeared in American Hunger.
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Fabre, Michel. “Afterword.” In American Hunger. By Richard Wright, 136–146. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
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Fabre notes a contrast between this work and Black Boy. American Hunger not only gives a gloomy outlook of life, in contrast to the hopeful Black Boy, but it also constitutes a more profound questioning of human beings’ predicament in a mass culture in which humanistic aspirations are negated. While Black Boy addresses itself to the materialism of the South, the United States, and the West, American Hunger speaks to humankind.
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Greenlee, Bob. Review of American Hunger. New Have Register, 19 June 1977: D3.
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For Greenlee, the book captures the feelings of a great writer sensitively responding to the spirit of the times.
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Harrington, Michael. Review of American Hunger. Chicago Sun-Times Book Week, 29 May 1977: 7.
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Harrington, a socialist activist, considers the book not a political tract, but the sensitive work of an artist and psychologist. Harrington observes that Wright’s break with the Communist Party was not a disagreement over their positions but rather stemmed from the Communists’ inability to understand him as a writer.
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Moore, Gerian Steve. “Richard Wright’s American Hunger.” CLA Journal 21 (September 1977): 79–89.
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Moore notes that the autobiography indicates Wright’s total alienation from the black community, as well as his brainwashing by the Communist Party.
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Walker, Kenneth. Review of American Hunger. Washington Star, 5 June 1977: F19.
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Walker suggests that whereas Black Boy ends with the promise of success, American Hunger ends with a cynicism “more appropriate for a black American Communist with a ninth grade education in Chicago during the Great Depression.”
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A Life in Exile, 1946–1960
In May 1946, Wright sailed to France and lived in Paris, where he met Gertrude Stein. By August 1947 he had established his life in exile in France. He helped Leopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire, and Alioune Diop found the journal Présence Africaine. Involved in helping the Rassemblement Démocratique Révolutionnaire, Wright made friends with Camus, Sartre, and Beauvoir. The early years of the exile produced The Outsider (1953). As soon as The Outsider was published in March 1953, he went to work on Black Power (1954). Before arriving in Africa, Wright intended Black Power to be an objective report on the social and political conditions of a colonial state on the verge of its independence. But his journey into the African hinterland shifted his focus, as he became more interested in exploring the psychological and philosophical attitudes of the people. In March 1956, Wright’s second nonfiction book written in exile, The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference, was published in America. While Wright was primarily concerned with European colonialism in Black Power, he dealt in depth with Eastern and African religions in The Color Curtain (1956). Just before the 1954 publication of Black Power, Wright had already started to prepare for his trip to Spain to write Pagan Spain (1957). White Man, Listen! (1957), the last nonfiction book Wright published in exile, expresses much the same view as The Color Curtain. But White Man, Listen! begins with Wright’s scathing criticism of the white race and its culture. The Long Dream (1958), Wright’s last novel, written in exile, appeared in 1958, two years before his death. Despite his efforts to portray African Americans’ bitter experiences in the Deep South, The Long Dream, some readers felt, betrayed a distinct decline in his creative power. Wright devoted the last eighteen months of his life in exile to writing over four thousand haiku. Sometime in 1959 he was introduced to haiku by Sinclair Beiles, a young South African poet living in Paris and associating with Beat poets such as Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Snyder. The Beat poets’ interest in Zen led Wright to haiku. In the late 1950s, Wright liked to work in the garden on his Normandy farm, an activity that supplied many themes for his haiku. Of his other experiences in this period, Wright’s travels to Africa are also reflected in his haiku. The African philosophy of life Wright witnessed among the Ashanti, the “primal outlook upon life” (Black Power, p. 266) served as an inspiration for his poetic sensibility.
Overviews
As a modernist writer, Wright’s life consisted of two diametrically opposed aspects. Before Wright went in exile in France, as Webb 1968, Fabre 1973, and Rowley 2001 all describe, he devoted his activities to the racial problems rampant in American society. He battled and dealt with them early his life in the South, and then later when he went to Chicago, involving himself with the Communist Party. On the other hand, his activities and concerns in exile were focused on his observations and views of other cultures, as closely examined in Fabre 1973 and documented by Kiuchi and Hakutani 2014. The nonfiction works Wright wrote in exile are analyzed in Hakutani 1996. Once he arrived in Paris he became a political activist involved in helping French and African leftist writers found the journal Présence Africaine. In helping the Rassemblement Démocratique Révolutionnaire, Wright made friends with Camus, Sartre, and Beavoir. The early years of the exile, when existentialism was in the air, produced The Outsider (1953). Wright’s interviews on radio and in essays during his exile are published in Kinnamon and Fabre 1993. In 1953, at the invitation of Kwame Nkrumah, who was to become the president of the newly independent Ghana, Wright traveled to the Gold Coast to write Black Power: A Record of Reactions in a Land of Pathos (1954). In 1954, encouraged by Gertrude Stein, Wright traveled to Spain to conduct research for Pagan Spain (1957). In 1955he was officially invited to the opening session of the Bandung Conference in Bandung, Indonesia. During the conference he met the delegates U Nu, Achmed Sukarno, Ali Sastroamidjojo, Norodom Sihanouk, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and other statesmen. Wright spoke in person with the Chinese prime minister Zhou Enlai. Leaders attending the conference included the Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, with whom he also spoke. In 1956 Wright published The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference. As he visited the three nations (Ghana, Indonesia, and Spain) across the continents, he acquired the firsthand knowledge and visions he was unable to achieve in America. During this period he also completed his last novel, The Long Dream (1958). In the last eighteen months of his life, he wrote over four thousand haiku. Tener 1982 is the first critical and historical study of Wright’s haiku. In his exile, as Gale 1980 and Maxwell 2015 have documented, Wright was a defiant, leftist writer as well as a political activist. In his later career he was a remarkably resilient thinker and writer, a unique intellectual among the modernist writers. All in all, Wright’s life and work made a revolutionary impact on modern American culture.
Fabre, Michel. The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright. New York: William Morrow, 1973.
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This work was the first complete biography, based on research Fabre conducted in the United States, as well as on Wright’s papers, manuscripts, and published writings, housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. As a Frenchman, Fabre documented Wright’s associations with his existentialist friends, Sartre, Camus, and Beauvoir.
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Gale, Addison. Richard Wright: Ordeal of a Native Son. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1980.
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Wright was considered a political activist as well as a novelist. This biography of his life emphasizes his political activities in the United States and in Europe—in particular, during his exile. Gale’s discussion of Wright’s work focuses largely on his postcolonial and postmodern writings: Black Power, The Color Curtain, Pagan Spain, and White Man, Listen!
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Hakutani, Yoshinobu. Richard Wright and Racial Discourse. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996.
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The study provides a critical analysis of each of Wright’s major works, focusing on the racial issues that underlie the work. Wright’s postmodern and postcolonial works, Black Power, The Color Curtain, and Pagan Spain, show that the ideas Wright acquired in Africa, Asia, and Spain challenged and altered some of his perspectives on American culture and racial issues.
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Kinnamon, Keneth, and Michel Fabre, eds. Conversations with Richard Wright. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1993.
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The book contains a series of interviews Wright had with French journalists, and also records the essays, notes, and comments he published during his exile in France. In these interviews, Wright was reserved about this adult private life, but he spoke freely about his past, which he considered representative of the lives of those inarticulate African Americans in the South. He also tried to explain the unfamiliar social background of his literary works to French or other European interviewers.
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Kiuchi, Toru, and Yoshinobu Hakutani. Richard Wright: A Documented Chronology, 1908–1960. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014.
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Documents Wright’s daily activities from birth to death. The work also documents Wright’s published and unpublished writings, notes, and correspondences with friends, writers, and politicians. It consists of two parts: “American Life, 1908–1946” and “A Life in Exile, 1946–1960.”
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Maxwell, William J. F. B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.
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Examining the FBI files on African American writers considered leftist, including Richard Wright, Maxwell demonstrates thatthe FBI’s surveillance of these writers had a significant impact on their works. As a result, their works reflect their defiance of governmental censorship. Maxwell has organized the F. B. Eyes Digital Archives to provide access to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) materials on Richard Wright and other writers.
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Rowley, Hazel. Richard Wright: The Life and Times. New York: Henry Holt, 2001.
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This biography features Wright’s most famous novel, Native Son, and the equally famous autobiography, Black Boy. Rowley, who was born in London and moved with her parents to Australia, looks unflinchingly at the experience of black manhood. She also comments on Wright’s posthumously published Haiku: This Other World.
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Tener, Robert L. “The Where, the When, the What: A Study of Richard Wright’s Haiku.” In Critical Essays on Richard Wright. Edited by Yoshinobu Hakutani, 273–298. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982.
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This work is the first critical study of Wright’s haiku. A poet and critic himself, Tener closely examines the backgrounds and sources of Wright’s efforts, particularly the four volumes of R. H. Blyth’s Haiku, from which Wright learned the history and technique of the Japanese poetic form.
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Webb, Constance. Richard Wright: A Biography. New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1968.
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This biography is a long, passionate account by a personal friend of Wright’s. Despite Webb’s access to Mrs. Wright’s notes, letters, and other original materials, the book lacks the coherence and chronology critics need. Though it provides useful information, it falls far short of a definitive biography of a major writer, such as Mark Shorer’s Sinclair Lewis: An American Life or W. A. Swanberg’s Dreiser.
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Existentialism
The character of Damon, Wright’s existentialist hero, as Haile 2012 shows, has elicited a variety of points of view and interpretations. Fabre 1982 shows that the most important philosophy Wright acquired in his exile was French existentialism. He became acquainted with the theory and practice of the philosophy through Camus, Sartre, and Beauvoir. His association with these French existentialists resulted in writing The Outsider (1953). In addition, Camus, Sartre, and Beauvoir can conveniently be placed side by side with Wright’s protagonist, who contemplates human existence through his exhaustive reading of Nietzsche, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Dostoyevsky. In particular, Wright was interested in reading The Stranger (Camus 1942). Compared with The Stranger, as Hakutani 1989 notes, The Outsider is similar in expressing existential philosophy, but it is different in characterization. Although Damon professes to be a nihilist, as does Meursault in The Stranger, he is never indifferent to human existence, as Meursault is. The Outsider represents a version of existentialism in which human action is viewed as the result of an individual’s choice and will. To Wright, the individual’s action must be assertive and, if need be, aggressive. This is perhaps why he was more attracted to Sartre and Beauvoir than to Camus. The chief difference in philosophy between The Outsider and The Stranger derives from the different philosophies of the two novelists. Damon rebels against society because it oppresses him by depriving him of the values he and society share, such as freedom in association and opportunity for success. Meursault is aloof to society because he does not believe in such values. In fact, he does not believe in marriage or family loyalty. If Meursault is characterized by his refusal to play society’s game, Damon is the type of person who cannot resist playing such a game. If society is threatened by Meursault’s indifference to it, it is Damon rather than society that feels threatened. Both novels are eloquent social criticisms in modern times. The Outsider is an indictment against American society, for not only does Wright maintain Damon’s innocence, but he also shows most convincingly that men in America “hate themselves and it makes them hate others” (The Outsider, p. 439). Hakutani 1989 reads The Stranger as an indictment of French society, for Camus proves that while the criminal is innocent, his judges are guilty. More significantly, however, comparison of the two novels of differing characters and traditions reveals that both Wright and Camus are writing ultimately about a universal human condition in modern times.
Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Translated by Stuart Gilbert. New York: Vintage, 1942.
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The Stranger is labeled an existentialist novel because of its protagonist, who embodies an existential outlook. Meursault is called a stranger to society, as well as to himself. He is indifferent to friendship, marriage, sex, love, and social status, for he does not believe in such values. The Stranger can be read as an indictment of French society, for Camus proves that while the criminal is innocent, his judges are guilty.
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Fabre, Michel. “Richard Wright, French Existentialism, and The Outsider.” In Critical Essays on Richard Wright. Edited by Yoshinobu Hakutani, 182–198. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982.
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This essay demonstrates that in associating with French existentialists such as Sartre, Camus, and Beauvoir, Wright was influenced by their worldview. “Wright’s encounter with French existentialism,” Fabre argues, “took place in the mid-1940s at a crucial time in his career, when, having rejected Communism, if not Marxist perspectives and explanatory principles, he was for the first time without the sustenance and burden of an ideology” (p. 182).
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Haile, James B., III, ed. Philosophical Meditations on Richard Wright. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2012.
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A collection of essays on existentialism that include Haile’s “Bigger-Cross Damon: Wright’s Existential Challenge” and “Black Boy: Phenomenology and the Existential Novel”; Desirée H. Melton’s “Experiencing Existentialism through Theme and Tone: Kierkegaard and Richard Wright”; Victor Anderson’s “Fear, Trembling, and Transcendence in the Everyday of Richard Wright: a Queer Reading”; and Abdul R. JanMohamed’s “Specularity as a Mode of Knowledge and Agency in Richard Wright’s Work.”
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Hakutani, Yoshinobu. “Richard Wright’s The Outsider and Albert Camus’s The Stranger.” Mississippi Quarterly 42 (Fall 1989): 365–378.
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Although Damon is a nihilist, as is Meursault, he is never indifferent to human existence, which Meursault is. Although Damon and Meursault are rebels against society, the motive behind the rebellion differs. Damon rebels against society because it oppresses him by depriving him of the values he and society share, such as freedom in association and opportunity for success. Meursault is aloof to society because he does not believe in such values.
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Travels to Africa, Asia, and Europe
During his exile, Wright made three travels across three continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe, visiting Ghana, Indonesia, and Spain, respectively. Hakutani 1996 suggests that the knowledge and visions he acquired on his travels challenged and altered those he had held in America. Margolies 1969 observes that in his journey into West Africa, Wright explored the psychological and philosophical attitudes of the people. While he felt awe for and had a deep respect for their instinctively natural, poetic attitudes toward existence, he came away with the impression that some of the rituals and customs, as well as most of the superstitions, stood in the way of building a modern nation. As for Africans, Fabre 1973 notes, Wright was not entirely impressed by their familial and tribal life. While he admired the close relationships that buttressed the Ashanti family and tribe, as Hakutani 1996 and Hakutani 2006 point out, he was troubled by the denial of individualism. Not only did Wright remain ambivalent on this subject, but to him this characteristic of unity and lack of individualism in African life was a sign of the paradox of Africa. Because Wright’s observations and analyses in his Asian travels dealt with diversity in culture and religion, as the essays collected in Smith 2001 point out, his overall vision was unified in terms of race. As documented in Kiuchi and Hakutani 2014, the Bandung Conference taught Wright that the progress of nonwhite people in Asia and Africa would be made by the peaceful coexistence of diverse cultures and by the scientific and technological assistance the West was to give the East. Such a lesson, Hakutani 1996 points out, makes a strong allusion to Wright’s observations on American racial issues. The advancement of racially oppressed people in the United States, Wright seems to imply, should be made by mutual respect for the diverse cultural heritages and by the assistance society is obligated to give the educationally and economically disadvantaged. Hakutani 2006 observes that the travels to Spain informed Wright that Spanish colonialists had been regarded as less resistant to miscegenation than other Europeans. And yet, as a Spanish informant told Wright, greediness and materialism ruined Spain (noted in Hakutani 1996). Such a critical view of Spain notwithstanding, Wright was nevertheless sympathetic toward the energetic maternal instinct of the Spanish woman. Over the centuries, Spanish men had built a state but never a society, a fact of history that betrayed another paradox of Spanish culture. This apotheosis of Spanish womanhood is derived from the female principle in life, a salient characteristic of pagan Spain.
Fabre, Michel. The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright. New York: William Morrow, 1973.
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This work was the first complete biography of Wright, based on research Fabre conducted in the United States, as well as on Wright’s papers, manuscripts, and published writings, housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. As a Frenchman, Fabre documented Wright’s associations with his existentialist friends, Sartre, Camus, and Beauvoir.
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Hakutani, Yoshinobu. Richard Wright and Racial Discourse. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996.
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The study provides a critical analysis of each of Wright’s major works, focusing on the racial issues that underlie the work. Wright’s postmodern and postcolonial works, Black Power, The Color Curtain, and Pagan Spain, show that the ideas Wright acquired in Africa, Asia, and Spain challenged and altered some of his perspectives on American culture and racial issues.
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Hakutani, Yoshinobu. Cross-Cultural Visions in African American Modernism. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006.
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This study constitutes a cross-cultural examination of the postmodern, postcolonial works, Black Power, The Color Curtain, and Pagan Spain, as well as Haiku: This Other World. In contrast to Wright’s works before he went in exile, the four works express newly acquired points of views and visions of other cultures in comparison with American culture.
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Kiuchi, Toru, and Yoshinobu Hakutani. Richard Wright: A Documented Chronology, 1908–1960. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014.
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Documents Wright’s daily activities from birth to death. The work also documents Wright’s published and unpublished writings, notes, and correspondences with friends, writers, and politicians. It consists of two parts: “American Life, 1908–1946” and “A Life in Exile, 1946–1960.”
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Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.
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Margolies’s thesis is that both Wright’s fiction and nonfiction reveal a pattern in which his central interest in social oppression is replaced by an argument for self-determination and, ultimately, freedom. Thus the central thesis in Black Boy, 12 Million Black Voices, and Pagan Spain is the fractured personality, whereas in The Color Curtain and White Man, Listen! it is the shattered civilization.
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Smith, Virginia Whatley, ed. Richard Wright’s Travel Writings: New Reflections. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.
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A collection of essays that includes Jack B. Moore’s “‘No Street Numbers in Accra’: Richard Wright’s African Cities”; S. Shankar’s “Richard Wright’s Black Power: Colonial Politics and the Travel Narrative”; Yoshinobu Hakutani’s “The Color Curtain: Richard Wright’s Journey into Asia”; Keneth Kinnamon’s “Wright, Hemingway, and the Bullfight: An Aficionado’s View”; and John Lowe’s “Richard Wright as Traveler/Ethnographer: The Conundrums of Pagan Spain.”
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Reviews and Criticism
The reviews of Wright’s works published during his exile received were less favorable than those of his works before he went in exile. The Outsider (1953), the first novel in his exile, received unfavorable reviews. Prescott 1953 gave a typical reaction to The Outsider. With due respect for Wright’s previous successes, Prescott politely insisted that Wright must have deplored Cross Damon’s moral weakness and irrational behavior at the end of the book. Black reviewers were bewildered by The Outsider, not because of Wright’s novel philosophy, but because he seemed to have lost contact with his native soil. For the first time in Wright’s career, his work received predominantly negative reviews. Most of the initial reactions indicated that Wright’s characterization is unconvincing, that Cross Damon is simply an embodiment of a half-baked philosophy. The Long Dream (1958), the only other novel in his exile, was also unfavorably reviewed. Black reviewers were not impressed by The Long Dream. Redding 1958 and Ford 1958, both cited under the Long Dream (1958), concurred that Wright had lost touch with his native soil and the swiftly changing racial currents in the United States. As for Wright’s nonfiction works, the reviews were mixed at best. One reason Black Power (1954), the first nonfiction work in his exile, was unfavorably received was its appearance immediately after The Outsider, which was considered by most critics intellectually confusing and emotionally tortuous. Redding, who was highly critical of Wright’s existentialism, called Black Power a confused book (Redding 1954, cited under Black Power (1954)). Reviews of The Color Curtain were more favorable than those of Black Power, since in it Wright takes a less anticolonial and more pro-West stance. Furthermore, he is decidedly anticommunist, admonishing the elites of the Third World against sympathizing with World Communism in developing their nations. In contrast to the two previous works, Pagan Spain (1957) received more favorable responses. Matthews 1957 (cited under Pagan Spain (1957)) suggested that the book proved that Spaniards are not race-conscious, as are other Europeans and European Americans. More recent estimates of Wright’s nonfiction in his exile have been highly favorable, as Margolies 1969 and Hakutani 2006 (Both cited under Pagan Spain (1957)), as well as the essays collected in Smith 2001 (cited under Travels to Africa, Asia, and Europe; see also Hakutani 2001, under The Color Curtain (1956) and Butler 2016, under Rite of Passage (1994)), all indicate.
The Outsider (1953)
The Outsider received more unfavorable reviews than favorable ones. Prescott 1953, giving a typical reaction, argues that the hero of the novel is a black man in name only; not only is his plight unreal, but all the incidents and characters turn out to be ill-digested ideas and clumsily constructed symbols. Redding 1953, by a well-known black reviewer, notes that Wright’s intention to tell the truth goes astray and leads to an abstract argument. Scott 1956 argues that Wright’s fictionalization of his own metaphysical quest is a failure, chiefly because he is not familiar with the psychological interiorities of the human mind. Hicks 1953’s reaction, however, was favorable: The Outsider poignantly expresses Wright’s deep-seated feelings about the human condition. Highet 1953 compares Cross Damon to Joe Christmas in Light in August and Ishmael in Moby-Dick. Glicksberg 1958 reads the novel as an existentialist work and calls Cross Damon a consistent nihilist. Gale 1968 argues that the novel is a declaration against a nation that fails to put its moral principles into practice. Brignano 1970 challenges the definition of The Outsider as a purely existentialist novel, arguing that the novel expresses Wright’s rejection of existentialism. Lawson 1971 considers The Outsider a Christian rather than atheistic and existential novel. Fabre 1982 argues Damon’s resolution at the end of his journey is a reflection of his dread rather than an independently reached choice.
Brignano, Russell C. Richard Wright: An Introduction to the Man and His Works. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970.
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Brignano argues that The Outsider indicates Wright’s rejection of existentialism. In portraying a destructive man like Cross Damon, who has walked out of society, Wright demands human beings be responsible for others as well as for themselves so that they eventually destroy injustice and irrationality.
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Fabre, Michel. “Richard Wright, French Existentialism, and The Outsider.” In Critical Essays on Richard Wright. Edited by Yoshinobu Hakutani, pp. 182–198. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982.
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Fabre finds The Outsider full of passion and feeling, whereas Camus’s style in The Stranger strikes him as impersonal. Fabre discovers that while the French existentialists are concerned with social survival by upholding humanism and morality, in The Outsider Wright denies all societal norms. As a result, Damon’s resolution at the end of the novel reflects his dread rather than his choice.
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Gale, Addison. “Richard Wright: Beyond Nihilism.” Negro Digest 18 (December 1968): 4–10.
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Gale reads the intellectual plight of Damon’s as a warning against the United States’ inability to put its principles of justice into practice. Such a nation would naturally produce Cross Damons who sought a nihilistic attempt to negate democracy itself.
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Glicksberg, Charles I. “The God of Fiction.” Colorado Quarterly 7 (Autumn 1958): 207–220.
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Glicksberg sees parallels between Wright and Camus in their treatment of the metaphysical rebel, and calls Cross Damon’s philosophy most consistently nihilistic.
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Hicks, Granville. “The Portrait of a Man Searching.” New York Times Book Review, 22 March 1953: 1, 35.
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Hicks, a white critic, is sympathetic, describing The Outsider as Wright’s most courageous and successful effort to come to terms with his view of the human condition.
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Highet, Gilbert. “Mind-Forged Manacles.” Harper’s Magazine 206 (May 1953): 97–98.
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Highet finds the book moving: Cross Damon, a man of solitude and remorse, reminds him of Joe Christmas in Faulkner’s Light in August and Ishmael in Melville’s Moby-Dick. To Highet, however, Wright’s transformation of a distracted, lustful postal clerk into a Nietzschean is unconvincing.
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Lawson, Lewis A. “Cross Damon: Kierkegaardian Man of Dread.” CLA Journal 14 (March 1971): 298–316.
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Lawson reads the novel as a Christian rather than an atheistic, existential novel, for at the end of the book Cross’s acceptance of guilt frees him to seek atonement.
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Prescott, Orville. Review of The Outsider. New York Times, 28 February 1953: 21.
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Prescott considers The Outsider an ill-conceived and clumsily constructed novel, arguing that its hero is superficial and unreal. He further argues that the way a brilliant writer like Richard Wright feels is a symptom of the intellectual and moral crisis of the times.
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Redding, Saunders. Review of The Outsider. Baltimore Afro-African, 19 May 1953.
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Redding, a black critic, notes that Wright’s brand of existentialism, instead of being a device for the representation of the truth, goes away from rather than toward the truth of life.
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Scott, Nathan A. “Search for Beliefs: Fiction of Richard Wright.” University of Kansas City Review 23 (Autumn 1956): 19–24.
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Scott suggests that Wright, unlike his American contemporaries, shared an existential view of man with his European writers even prior to The Outsider. Scott, however, believes that Wright’s fictionalization of his own metaphysical quest in The Outsider fails because Wright lacks knowledge in the psychological makeup of the human mind.
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Savage Holiday (1954)
One reason why Savage Holiday, Wright’s third novel, received no reviews is his exclusive treatment of white characters and his concern with nonracial matters. The anomaly of this novel is further reflected by the scantiness of the critical attention it has received. Margolies 1969 offers the only critical analysis of the novel. Margolies considers Savage Holiday an experimental novel in which Wright describes the social and psychological pressures imposed on white people as the same as those imposed on black people. Reilly 1977 reads the book as a detective story as well as a psychological novel.
Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.
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Although Margolies finds some of Wright’s best prose in the first part, “Anxiety,” he considers the novel far short of genuine artistic achievement. Not only are the author’s psychological interpretations too condescending, but Fowler’s character is patterned too strictly on a Freudian principle; consequently, the plot becomes contrived, coincidental, and hackneyed.
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Reilly, John M. “Richard Wright’s Curious Thriller, Savage Holiday.” CLA Journal 21 (December 1977): 218–223.
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Reilly reads the book as a thriller as well as a psychological novel. Accordingly, he analyzes it as a dual narrative: on the one hand, Fowler’s character is well portrayed by action and dialogue; on the other, the plot is developed strictly for the purposes of detecting the crime.
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Black Power (1954)
Black Power received mixed reviews when it appeared, but subsequent critical estimates make it an important contribution to cross-cultural studies. Redding 1954, an unfavorable review, argued that the reader would be bewildered, not by the dark complexity of the Gold Coast, but by Wright’s own dark philosophical ambivalence. Horchler 1954 was also critical of Wright’s method of analysis, as Horchler had no confidence in Wright’s knowledge of Africa. White 1954, while giving credit to Wright’s reporting skills, questioned his inadequate knowledge of Christianity and religion in general. Cary 1954 was enthusiastic about Black Power and thought that Wright’s vision of African culture was judicious. An anonymous review Native Son in Africa 1954, observed that the power of the book comes from Wright’s colorful, photographic portrayal of African villages and market places. Jansen 1954 considered Wright in Black Power an artist who does not hesitate to depict his own vision and thought. The most comprehensive critical appraisal for Black Power, as for most of Wright’s nonfiction works, is in Margolies 1969. Margolies’s thesis is that both Wright’s fiction and nonfiction reveal a pattern in which his central interest in social oppression is replaced by an argument for self-determination and, ultimately, freedom. Another significant study of Wright’s nonfiction work is Reilly 1982. Reilly shows that American Hunger and Black Power both thrive in describing a self-created persona.
Cary, Joyce. “Catching Up with History.” The Nation 179 (16 October 1954): 332–333.
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For Cary, a noted British writer and a veteran of the British Foreign Service, Wright has presented a most judicious picture of an extraordinary situation. Cary concurs with Wright on almost all aspects of life in the Gold Coast—for example, in seeing tribal paganism as more genuinely religious than the bourgeois Christian church, or in criticizing the British for educating Africans at the expense of shattering their tribal culture.
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Chapman, John. “Beware of the West, Negro Writer Warns Africans.” Minneapolis Star, 1 October 1954.
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Chapman finds Wright’s description vivid and his scrutiny close, but criticizes his anti-British stance.
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Clark, Michael. “A Struggle for the Black Man Alone?” New York Times Book Review, 26 September 1954: 3.
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Wright, Clark points out, discusses pre-Christian Africa with nostalgia, more taken with Mohammedanism than Christianity.
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Horchler, R. T. Review of Black Power. Best Sellers 14 (1 October 1954): 97.
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Horchler questions the reliability of Wright’s analysis of a highly religious and spiritually oriented African nation, given his inadequate knowledge of Christianity and religion in general, as well as his materialistic point of view.
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Jansen, William High. “Pretentious Is the Term.” Lexington Herald Leader, 7 November 1954.
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Jaensen emphasizes Wright’s skill as artist, pointing out that he never fails to state his own point of view and perplexity. Jensen’s point was prophetic, because if Black Power’s value lies in Wright’s unique quality as a journalist as well as an artist, the book is perhaps one of the pioneer works in the development of what is now called “nonfiction fiction” or “New Journalism.”
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Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.
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Margolies’s thesis is that in both Wright’s fiction and nonfiction his concept of social oppression is replaced by his theory of self-determination and freedom. Thus the central thesis in Black Boy, 12 Million Black Voices, Black Power, and Pagan Spain is the fractured personality, whereas in The Color Curtain and White Man, Listen! it is the shattered civilization.
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“Native Son in Africa.” The Reporter 11 (4 November 1954): 48.
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Sees the book’s power coming from “the colorful, almost photographic portraiture of villages and market places” (p. 48).
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Redding, Saunders. Review of Black Power. Baltimore Afro-American, 23 October 1954.
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Redding, a black critic who was highly critical of Wright’s existentialism in The Outsider, calls Black Power a confused book. Redding observes that Wright had recently repudiated both communism and existentialism, and that Black Power drifted between wishful Marxist politics and fragile Western democracy.
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Reilly, John M. “The Self Creation of the Intellectual: American Hunger and Black Power.” In Critical Essays on Richard Wright. Edited by Yoshinobu Hakutani, pp. 213–227. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982.
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Aside from Black Power’s concern with the historical phenomenon of the Gold Coast, the work, Reilly suggests, provides a vision of Wright’s self-created persona. Wright’s journalistic observations are adapted to a certain point of view that will account for what Africa means to him as well as to the reader.
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White, Walter. New York Herald Tribune Book Review, 26 September 1954: 1.
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White evaluates Wright’s reporting in superlative terms, though he points out some inaccurate assumptions. One was Wright’s attributing Nkrumah’s skill and success to the training he had received from British Communists; instead, Nkurumah had learned a great deal in the United States while a student there. Also, Wright was ignorant of the diversity among African cultures, psychologies, and religions, tending to think all Africans would think and act identically.
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The Color Curtain (1956)
The Color Curtain received more favorable reviews than Black Power. Tillman Durdin, himself a citizen of Indonesia, where the Bandung Conference was held, as well as a reporter, endorsed Wright’s findings from the conference (Durdin 1956). Berry 1956 and Wisley 1956, both by leftist critics, agreed with Wright’s anticommunism. Paula Snelling, who had lived in Indonesia, found Wright’s account of the hearsay of white superiority on Asian and African cultures illuminating (Snelling 1956). Cobb 1982 endorsed Wright’s observation that the national movements in Asia and Africa could not be analyzed in terms of left and right politics. Margolies 1969 states that Wright’s major point in The Color Curtain is that the issue of race determines the cultural climate of emerging nations in Asia and Africa. More recently The Color Curtain has been read not only as a postcolonial but also a postmodern text. Hakutani 2001 tries to show that the central voice conveyed in The Color Curtain, as in Pagan Spain, comes from the margins of a dominant culture.
Berry, Abner W. Review of The Color Curtain. New York Daily Worker, 15 May 1956: 5.
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Berry, a leftist critic, finds it difficult to disagree with Wright’s anticommunism.
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Cobb, Nina Kressner. “Richard Wright and the Third World.” In Critical Essays on Richard Wright. Edited by Yoshinobu Hakutani, pp. 228–239. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982.
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Cobb, agreeing with Edward Margolies, argues that Wright concluded from the Bandung Conference that the National Movement in Asia and Africa could not be analyzed in the context of left and right politics.
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Durdin, Tillman. Review of The Color Curtain. New York Times Book Review, 18 March 1956: 1.
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Tillman, himself an “elite” of Indonesia, where the 1955 Bandung Conference was held, concurs with Wright’s conclusion: the crucial question facing Asians is whether Asia will be dominated by communism or by democracy.
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Hakutani, Yoshinobu. “The Color Curtain: Richard Wright’s Journey into Asia.” In Richard Wright’s Travel Writings: New Reflections. Edited by Virginia Whatley Smith, 63–77. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.
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Hakutani demonstrates that the observations Wright made in dialogue with Asian politicians enlightened his reconsideration of the problems of race and racism in America. Some of his views of race and racial prejudice, expressed in The Color Curtain, were originally derived from his nonfiction books, such as Black Boy. The central voice conveyed in The Color Curtain comes from the margins of the dominant culture.
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Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.
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To Margolies, Wright’s major point in The Color Curtain is that the issue of race determines the cultural climate of emerging nations in Asia and Africa. For Wright, race has bound these people together despite their obvious differences in culture, religion, and custom. It does not seem to occur to Wright, however, that their new leaders may use race simply to maintain themselves in power.
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Snelling, Paula. “Import of Bandung.” The Progressive 19 (June 1956): 39–40.
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Snelling, who lived in Indonesia, finds Wright’s account of “the myth of white superiority upon Asia and Africa” (p. 39) illuminating, even though she admits that his knowledge of the philosophical and cultural history of these people was inadequate.
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Wisley, Charles. Review of The Color Curtain. Masses and Mainstream 19 (June 1956): 50–53.
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Wisley strongly endorses Wright’s message that imperialism is dead in the Third World.
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Pagan Spain (1957)
After two successful nonfiction works on the Third World, Wright followed Gertrude Stein’s suggestion to visit one of the oldest Western cultures. Pagan Spain is unique in Wright’s canon, because race is not the primary issue in his report. Reviewers were favorable for Wright’s taking on this new challenge in writing. Matthews 1957 predicted that the book would offend the Franco regime and most Roman Catholics who read the book. Hicks 1957, however, disagreed with Wright’s view of Spain’s fossilization. Ottley 1957 considered Wright’s depiction of a bullfight inferior to Hemingway’s. An anonymous review in the Washington Star, Spain Today 1957 was critical of Wright’s findings in Spain. Carman 1957, while giving credit to Wright’s interviews with Spaniards, considered some of his findings inaccurate. Later estimates of the book, however, have been higher than those of the initial reviewers. Margolies 1969 clearly recognizes a parallel between Wright’s own oppressive Seventh-day Adventist upbringing and the role of the Catholic Church in Spain. Hakutani 2006 examines Pagan Spain not only as a postcolonial and postmodern text, but also as a cross-cultural text. To Hakutani, Pagan Spain betrays the characteristics of other cultures, philosophies, and religiosities.
Carman, Harry J. “Richard Wright in Spain.” New York Herald Tribune Book Review, 10 March 1957: 8.
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Carman, while recognizing the strength of the book in Wright’s interviews with various Spaniards, regrets that Wright’s facts are often inaccurate and that his point of view is highly subjective and personal.
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Hakutani, Yoshinobu. Cross-Cultural Visions in African American Modernism. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006.
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This is a cross-cultural examination of the postmodern, postcolonial works, Black Power, The Color Curtain, Pagan Spain, and Haiku: This Other World. Unlike his books written in America, these works express newly acquired visions of other cultures in comparison with American culture. Pagan Spain, in particular, can be read as a postmodern text, in which the central voice conveyed comes from the margins of a dominant culture.
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Hicks, Granville. “Richard Wright: Spain the Fossil.” New York Post, 29 February 1957.
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Hicks observes that what Toynbee calls fossilization has occurred in Spain, but he suspects Wright made an error in dating the fossil.
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Matthews, Herbert L. “How It Seemed to Him.” New York Times Book Review, 24 February 1957: 7.
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For Matthews, Pagan Spain proves that Spaniards were not race-conscious. Wright’s observation that Spain was obsessed with sex and religion was not factual: Wright’s contention betrayed more about himself.
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Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.
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Margolies agrees with the reviewers who maintain that Pagan Spain is as much a personal document as an objective analysis. There is clearly a parallel between Wright’s own oppressive Seventh-day Adventist upbringing and the role of the church in Spain. Despite the discursive style, the book has a unity of purpose. And in Pagan Spain, as in his best fiction, Wright succeeds in depicting violence, suspense, and movement.
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Ottley, Roi. “He Should Stick to Fiction.” Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine of Books, 3 March 1957: 10.
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Ottley calls Wright’s reporting of a bullfight glaringly inferior to Hemingway’s, stating that readers do not actually see a bullfight but only feel Wright’s emotion.
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“Spain Today.” Washington Star, 24 February 1957.
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Observes that Wright’s portrayal of Spanish culture is not objective and that Wright’s bias and prejudice weaken all his findings.
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White Man, Listen! (1957)
White Man, Listen! was received with respect by reviewers, mainly because by 1957 Wright had firmly established his reputation as an authority on social and racial oppression. Ivy 1957 quoted Wright’s well-proven statement on the psychological reactions of oppressed people: that oppression oppresses and oppression takes its toll. Ivy’s reaction to the book was typical, noting Wright’s emphasis on the crucial role Western-educated leaders of the nations were playing in bridging the Western and non-Western worlds. According to Handlin 1957, the central question of the book is whether the West would be able to encourage the elite in working out a creative accommodation rather than remaining a promoter of Western technology. Isaacs 1960 argues that Wright’s disbelief in religion and his status as an outsider in his own country gave him a unique vantage point to assess the Third World independently. Williams 1964 attributes Wright’s success to his fantastic sense of perception and regards his writing as prophetic. Margolies 1969 states that Wright’s argument in White Man, Listen! is that the achievement of freedom is an individual matter. Likewise, Cobb 1982 observes that Wright’s experience as a black man and as a world citizen influenced the basic concepts underlying his later nonfiction works.
Cobb, Nina Kressner. “Richard Wright and the Third World.” In Critical Essays on Richard Wright. Edited by Yoshinobu Hakutani, pp. 228–239. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982.
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Cobb, a white critic, notes that Wright’s experience as a black man not only in America but in the world influenced the basic concepts that underlie his later nonfiction works.
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Handlin, Oscar. “Patterns of Prejudice.” New York Times Book Review, 20 October 1957: 3.
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The central question of White Man, Listen!, observes Handlin, is whether the West would be able to encourage the elite in working out “a creative accommodation,” rather than remaining “a promoter of Western technology” (p. 3).
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Isaacs, Harold R. “Five Writers and Their African Ancestors.” Phylon 21 (Fall 1960): 243–265, 317–336.
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Isaacs argues that Wright’s disbelief in religion and his status as an outsider in America gave him a unique and objective perspective to assess the Third World.
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Ivy, James W. “Promise and Failure.” The Crisis 64 (December 1957): 640.
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Ivy quotes Wright’s well-proven statement on the psychological reactions of oppressed people: that “oppression oppresses, that oppression takes its toll, that it leaves a mark behind” (p. 640).
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Maloney, Joseph F. Review of White Man, Listen! Best Sellers 17 (15 November 1957): 280.
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For Maloney, Wright emphasizes the Western contributions these elites made: “not a particular political or economic system, but freedom of speech, the secular state, the independent personality and the autonomy of science” (p. 280).
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Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.
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For Margolies, Wright’s point in the book, as elsewhere, is that the achievement of freedom is an individual, private matter. This is why, even though the book deals with the problem of race, it is also a book about Wright himself: the liberation of his mind from his familial and social environment, the discovery of himself as an outsider, and the determination to change the world in which he lived.
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Williams, John A. “Introduction.” In White Man, Listen! By Richard Wright, iv–xii. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964.
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Williams attributes Wright’s success to his keen, visionary sense of perception, and regards his writing as prophetic, as great writing should be.
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The Long Dream (1958)
Despite Wright’s efforts to portray his bitter experiences in the rural South, as he did so successfully in Uncle Tom’s Children and Black Boy, the initial reviewers thought that The Long Dream, Wright’s last novel and his third novel written in exile, betrayed a distinct decline in his creative power. Saunders Redding, who had earlier detected a danger inherent in Wright’s exile, observed that in The Long Dream Wright cut out the emotional cord of his art and what remained was a fading memory of righteous love and anger (Redding 1958). Nick Aaron Ford another fellow black critic, concurred with Redding that Wright’s execution of the novel is marred by a lack of solid, realistic material (Ford 1958). Agreeing with Redding and Ford, Maxwell Geismar, a well-known white reviewer, remarked that while Uncle Tom’s Children, Native Son, and Black Boy were solid, savage, terrifying fictional portrayals of the black mind, The Long Dream turned out to be a surrealistic fantasy of paranoid, suicidal impulses, described in political terms (Geismar 1958). Granville Hicks, another well-known white reviewer, observed that what Wright had thought realism in The Long Dream was merely a surface realism (Hicks 1958). The lack of depth many reviewers deplored had some appeal for others, who considered The Long Dream with an eye for the social dimension provided in the novel. Ottley 1958 argued that the novel provided a social document of unusual worth, with a catalog of lynching, police brutality, and a race riot in a Southern town. Kiniery 1958 found a value in Wright’s depiction of black characters as amoral and obsessed with irregular but frequent sexual relations. Shapiro 1958 compared The Long Dream with Native Son for its treatment of the problem of race directly, not by analogy, and also with well-established social novels like Dreiser’s An American Tragedy and Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. The Long Dream, like Savage Holiday, has received insufficient critical attention. The most sympathetic, but discerning analysis is provided in Margolies 1969. Margolies considers Wright’s characterization impeccable, except toward the end of the book, where Wright allows Fishbelly to remove himself from the black world, go to jail, and then travel to Paris to seek his dream. Margolies concludes that Fishbelly’s removal from his native land somehow alloys his dream. Similarly, Spandel 1971 reads the novel in terms of Wright’s own life. Spandel’s observation is valuable, since she cogently relates the hero’s quest to Wright’s life.
Ford, Nick Aaron. “A Long Way from Home.” Phylon 19 (Winter 1958): 435–436.
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Ford, a black critic, concurs with his fellow black critic Saunders Redding that Wright had lost touch with his native soil and the swiftly changing racial currents in the United States.
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Geismar, Maxwell. “Growing Up in Fear’s Grip.” New York Herald Tribune Book Review, 16 November 1958: 10.
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Geismar remarks that while Uncle Tom’s Children, Native Son, and Black Boy were “solid, bitter, savage, almost terrifying fictional studies of the Negro mind,” The Long Dream turned out to be “a surrealistic fantasy of paranoid and suicidal impulses, veiled in political terminology” (p. 10).
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Hicks, Granville. “The Power of Richard Wright.” Saturday Review 41 (18 October 1958): 13, 65.
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For Hicks, what Wright had thought realism in The Long Dream was merely a surface realism. Fishbelly Tucker is not only alienated from his cultural background, but also from his actual experiences of life.
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Kiniery, Paul. Review of The Long Dream. Best Sellers 18 (1 November 1958): 296–297.
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Kiniery finds a value in Wright’s depiction of black characters as amoral and as “interested in practically nothing but irregular but frequent sexual relations” (p. 296). Kiniery, however, cautions that “this is in reality blamed on the white people” (p. 297).
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Margolies, Richard. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern University Press, 1969.
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Margolies considers Wright’s characterization impeccable, except toward the end of the book, where Wright allows Fishbelly to remove himself from the black world, go to jail, and then travel to Paris to realize his dream. What is lacking at the crucial point in Fishbelly’s development is his actual survival in a real situation. Insisting that any dream must be related to an authentic environment, Margolies concludes that Fishbelly’s removal from that environment dampens the dream.
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Ottley, Roi. “Wright’s New Novel Isn’t for Squeamish.” Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine of Books, 26 October 1958.
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Ottley argues that the novel provides a social document of unusual worth with realistic descriptions of lynching, police brutality, and race riot that actually happened in a Southern town.
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Redding, Saunders. “The Way It Was.” New York Times Book Review, 26 October 1958: 4, 38.
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Redding, who had earlier detected a danger inherent in Wright’s exile, observed that in The Long Dream Wright had cut the emotional umbilical cord through which his art was fed, and all that remained was a fading memory of his love and anger.
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Shapiro, Charles. “A Slow Burn in the South.” New Republic 139 (24 November 1958): 17–18.
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Shapiro compares The Long Dream with Native Son for its treatment of the problem of race directly, not by analogy, and also with well-established social novels like Dreiser’s An American Tragedy and Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.
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Spandel, Katherine. “The Long Dream.” New Letters 38 (Winter 1971): 88–89.
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“As early as his childhood,” remarks Spandel, “Wright could find little love in his own people, and he surely found little in whites. It is not surprising . . . that Wright leaves his last hero literally up in the air” (p. 89).
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Eight Men (1961)
Redding 1961 characteristically dismissed Eight Men as the work of a declining author. For Redding, even the most impressive story, “The Man Who Lived Underground,” seemed a typical Gothic tale. Likewise, Gilman 1961 found the collection of stories inept, stale, and dated. The most sympathetic reading was offered by Howe 1961, Wright’s consistent champion. In the better-known “The Man Who Lived Underground,” Howe found not a congenial expression of existentialism, as other critics did, but an effective narrative rhythm. Later critical estimates of this short story collection are decidedly more favorable. EvenJames Baldwin, in his essay “The Survival of Richard Wright” (Baldwin 1961) considered the work a reflection of Wright’s authentic rage. The most intensive critical analysis of Eight Men is provided by Margolies 1969. Margolies notes a distinct change of tone in Eight Men by comparison with Uncle Tom’s Children, as the earlier racial hatred is replaced by racial understanding. Goede 1969 argues that though many critics consider Wright’s story the chief source for Ellison’s Invisible Man, “The Man Who Lived Underground” and Invisible Man differ, for nothing significant happens to Fred Daniels, while Invisible Man endures and becomes a man of wisdom and hope. Bakish 1971 reads Wright’s novella as his best accomplishment because it is an intellectualized story based on an authentic experience. Fabre 1971 testifies to the authenticity of the story, showing that it derives not from Dostoyevsky, but from an account in True Detective (August 1941) of Herbert C. Wright, a Los Angeles white man who lived underground and robbed businesses in 1931 and 1932.
Bakish, David. “Underground in an Ambiguous Dream World.” Studies in Black Literature 2 (Autumn 1971): 18–23.
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Bakish regards “The Man Who Lived Underground” as Wright’s finest achievement because it is an intellectualized but realistic story based on an authentic experience. Wright himself lived figuratively underground as an intellectual and, like Daniels, found it difficult to separate dream and reality.
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Baldwin, James. “The Survival of Richard Wright.” The Reporter 24 (16 March 1961): 52–55.
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Baldwin considers the work a reflection of Wright’s authentic rage. Baldwin argues that Wright’s unrelentingly bleak landscape reflects not merely the Deep South and Chicago’s South Side, but that of the world and of the human heart. Reprinted as “Eight Men” in Nobody Knows My Name (New York: Dial Press, 1961), pp. 181–189.
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Bramwell, Gloria. “Artistic Nightmare.” Midstream 7 (Spring 1961): 110–112.
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Bramwell rejects “The Man Who Lived Underground” as Wright’s failure in using existentialism, just as he failed to incorporate communism into his work. The result would not even rank with Ralph Ellison’s similar treatment in Invisible Man. Ellison’s hero steels and kills as a rebellious child. This inverse paternalism in Wright’s story is a major shortcoming of Wright as an artist.
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Fabre, Michel. “Richard Wright: The Man Who Lived Underground.” Studies in the Novel 3 (Summer 1971): 165–169.
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Fabre reads the story as an existential parable in which an individual wears a mask borrowed from others. In his biography Fabre notes the differences between Wright’s story and Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground. Dostoyevsky’s underground is spiritual and unreal, unlike Wright’s, where Fred Daniels must traverse a maze of sewers. Fred is rather like Bigger, his situation symbolic of black America; he is both part and not part of American society.
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Gilman, Richard. “The Immediate Misfortunes of Widespread Literacy.” Commonweal 28 (April 1961): 130–131.
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Gilman finds the collection of stories inept, dated, and humorless. To Gilman, Wright’s attempts to write stories of tragedy or pathos fail.
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Goede, William. “On Lower Frequencies: The Buried Men in Wright and Ellison.” Modern Fiction Studies 15.4 (Winter 1969): 483–501.
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Goede argues that although many critics consider Wright’s story the chief source for Ellison’s Invisible Man, the works differ in that there is no character development in Wright’s story, whereas Ellison’s hero is developed into a man of wisdom and hope.
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Howe, Irvine. “Richard Wright: A Word of Farewell.” New Republic 144 (13 February 1961): 17–18.
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Howe, Wright’s consistent champion, was pleased by Eight Men for its signs of Wright’s continuous experimentation. For Howe, Wright thrives on naturalism, for when he moves from his naturalistic style to a symbolic style and technique he goes astray. Wright’s naturalistic detail, Howe notes, is as essential to his ultimate effect of shock and bruise as understatement to Hemingway’s effect of irony and loss.
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Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.
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Margolies notices the tone in Eight Men is changed from that in Uncle Tom’s Children. The earlier racial hatred is also replaced by the racial understanding in a story like “Big Black Good Man.” As for “The Man Who Lived Underground,” Margolies reads Fred Daniels’s adventures as suggestive of Wright’s own feelings after ten years in the Communist underground.
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Redding, Saunders. Review of Eight Men. New York Herald Tribune Book Review, 22 January 1961: 33.
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Though the stories indicate distress with his rootlessness, Wright’s long exile, Redding notes, somehow lightens his anguish. For Redding, even the most impressive story, “The Man Who Lived Underground,” seems “a first-class Gothic tale” (p. 33). Despite the stylistic innovations, Redding observes, “It is as if Gabriel, brandishing his trumpet and filling his lungs with air to blow the blast of doom, managed only a penny whistle’s pile” (p. 33).
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Rite of Passage (1994)
Rite of Passage was published for the first time more than thirty years after Wright’s death. It features a fifteen-year-old African American youth’s passage to manhood. The posthumous publication of the novella, as Rampersad 1994 observes, was opportune, because Wright was ahead of his time in analyzing the relationships among racism, juvenile delinquency, violent crime, and the black urban ghetto. Butler 2016 is impressed by Wright’s characterization of women in the story. Butler suggests that Wright envisions a woman as a symbol of human nurturing. If Johnny Gibbs were helped by a mature woman, he would have been able to grow out of his sense of alienation. Kiuchi 1995 traces Wright’s draft of the story begun in 1944 and compares it with the final text published in 1994.
Butler, Robert J. “Richard Wright’s Rite of Passage and a Reconsideration of Richard Wright’s Portrayal of Women.” In Richard Wright: Writing America at Home and from Abroad. Edited by Virginia Whatley Smith. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016.
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A survey of Wright’s depiction of women throughout his career and an in-depth analysis of how women are portrayed in his posthumously published short novel, Rite of Passage. This study challenges the conventional view of Wright as a misogynist by demonstrating how his works consistently portray women in very positive, sometimes heroic, ways.
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Kiuchi, Toru. “On Richard Wright’s Rite of Passage.” Nihon University College of Industrial Technology Studies Report 28 (June 1995): 31–38.
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Rite of Passage is a novella whose protagonist is a fifteen-year-old boy who joins a gang to be a thief. The book was posthumously published thirty-four years after Wright began to write it, in 1944. Kiuchi explores the genesis and development of the novella. In Japanese.
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Rampersad, Arnold. “Afterword.” In Rite of Passage. By Richard Wright, 117–143. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.
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This afterword is a precise analysis of the novella that features a fifteen-year-old African American youth’s passage to manhood. It also documents the sources of this story: the Wiltwyck School for Boys in Esopus, New York, where a black youth like Johnny Gibbs might have been educated. The central concern in the story is the psychology of the delinquent black youth. Rampersad also documents that Eleanor Roosevelt, concerned about helping unfortunate black youth, was a supporter of the school.
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Haiku: This Other World (1998)
Haiku: This Other World, edited with notes and afterword by Yoshinobu Hakutani and Robert L. Tener, was based on Wright’s selection of 817 haiku, “This Other World: Projections in the Haiku Manner,” a manuscript deposited in The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Wright selected 817 out of the 4,000 haiku he wrote in the last eighteen months of his life. This edition was published by Arcade in 1998 and reprinted by Random House/Anchor in 2000, and by Arcade/Skyhorse in 2012 under the title Haiku: The Last Poems of an American Icon. The Richard Wright estate also deposited another posthumous manuscript, “Four Thousand Haiku” in The Beinecke Library, yet to be published. The publication of Haiku: This Other World received all favorable reviews. Robert Haas, the US Poet Laureate from 1995 to 1997, wrote in The Washington Post: “Here’s a surprise, a book of haiku written in his last years by the fierce and original American novelist Richard Wright. Wright changed American literature by writing books—‘Native Son,’ ‘Black Boy’—about the fact that poverty, discrimination and hopelessness are not necessarily a formula for producing citizens” (Haas 1999). William Higginson, the author of The Haiku Handbook, reads many of Wright’s haiku as excellent haiku (Higginson 1999). Lewitz 1999, a review in Japan Times, stated, “Haiku: This Other World is an outstanding addition to Wright’s literary and humanist achievements and stands as a beacon to this other world, masterful and free.” Wright’s haiku have also received intensive critical attention. Hakutani 2007 shows that some of Wright’s haiku were written under the influence of classic haiku and Zen philosophy. Hakutani also shows that the African outlook on life he became familiar with in his exile inspired him to write haiku. Hakutani 2014 documents that Wright learned how to compose haiku from the theory and technique of haiku shown in the four-volume Haiku by R. H. Blyth, the foremost Japanologist and Sinologist. Zheng 2011 is a collection of the critical essays that respond to Wright’s haiku from various perspectives.
Haas, Robert. “Five Haikus by Richard Wright.” Washington Post, 11 April 1999.
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Robert Haas, a well-known contemporary American poet, was enormously impressed and surprised by Wright’s haiku, because Wright was a fierce novelist turned inspiring poet, and a skillful technician in composing haiku in English. Haas realized Wright adhered to the 5–7–5 syllabic measure of classic haiku. Haas was also impressed by Wright’s large production of haiku in such a short time at the end of his life.
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Hakutani, Yoshinobu. “Richard Wright’s Haiku, Zen, and the African ‘Primal Outlook upon Life.’” Modern Philology 104 (May 2007): 510–528.
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Hakutani shows that many of Wright’s haiku were influenced by the Zen philosophy and aesthetics that underlie classic haiku, and inspired by the African primal outlook on life with which he became familiar in his exile. Hakutani reads some of Wright’s haiku as imagistic and modernistic rather than classical and traditional.
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Hakutani, Yoshinobu. Richard Wright and Haiku. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2014.
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Before trying his hand at haiku, Wright learned the theory and technique of haiku shown in R. H. Blyth’s Haiku. Wright emulated classic haiku poets, such as Basho, Buson, and Issa, as well as the modernist Shiki. Many of Wright’s haiku reflect the Zen discipline and beauty in depicting human beings’ relationship, not to his fellow human beings as he described in his fiction, but to nature and the natural world.
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Higginson, William. Review of Haiku: This Other World. Santa Fe News, 21 February 1999.
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Higginson notes that Wright adhered to the traditional Japanese syllabic measure of 5–7–5, as well as to the requirement of kigo (seasonal reference) in many of his haiku. Higginson observes that a somber tone pervades much of Wright’s haiku, reflecting on the death of his closest friends and his mother. The best poems among Wright’s haiku, Higginson points out, reflect the pure observation and delicate sensibility that characterize the best Japanese haiku.
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Lewitz, Leza. Review of Haiku: This Other World. Japan Times, 27 April 1999.
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Lewitz, an American reviewer, considers Haiku: This Other World an outstanding addition to Wright’s literary and humanist achievements and a beacon to this other world. She calls Wright’s haiku masterful and free. She also finds the nexus between Wright’s haiku and the illness Wright was battling in his last years in Paris. As his illness worsened, Lewitz observes, Wright reflected on another world beyond race or politics—this other world.
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Zheng, Jianqing, ed. The Other World of Richard Wright: Perspectives on His Haiku. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2011.
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A collection of essays, including Yoshinobu Hakutani’s “Richard Wright’s Haiku, Zen, and the African ‘primal outlook upon life’”; Toru Kiuchi’s “Zen Buddhism in Richard Wright’s Haiku”; Meta L. Schettler’s “Healing and Loss: Richard Wright’s Haiku and the Southern Landscape”; Richard A. Iadonisi’s “‘I am nobody’: The Haiku of Richard Wright”; Sachi Nakachi’s “From Japonisme to Modernism: Richard Wright’s African American Haiku”;and Jianqing Zheng’s “Nature, the South, and Spain in Haiku: This Other World.”
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A Father’s Law (2008)
A Father’s Law, a novel, is the latest publication of Wright’s posthumous manuscripts. Rite of Passage (1994), a novella, is another posthumous publication, and Haiku: This Other World (1998) is a second posthumous publication. The publication of A Father’s Law became a reality with the efforts of Julia Wright and Hugh Van Dusen, editorial director of HarperCollins. Julia Wright notes in her introduction (Wright 2008) that Wright, despite his ill health, was “gripped by a new powerful idea” (p. vi) in writing the novel. She also suggests that the prototypes of Ruddy Turner, a father, and his son Tommy, are not Richard Wright and Julia Wright, respectively. Ward 2009 reads the novel as a realistic rendition of the practice of law and order in the desegregated urban communities in the North, as opposed to that of the segregated rural communities in the South, as depicted in The Long Dream (1958). Cassuto 2011 reads male violence in A Father’s Law in the context of Wright’s ambivalence over the American civil rights movement. Kiuchi and Fukushima 2015 notes that the plot of Tommy’s decision not to marry Marie, who has inherited syphilis, is based on Wright’s indefinitely postponed his wedding with Marion Sawyer, who was infected with a similar disease. Butler 2008 reads the novel as an expression of nihilism as opposed to Marxism, which Native Son expresses.
Butler, Robert J. “Signifying and Self Portraiture in Richard Wright’s A Father’s Law.” CLA Journal 51.1 (September 2008): 55–73.
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An analysis of how Wright’s late novel, which he was attempting to complete at his death, consciously echoes his first published novel, Native Son, but ironically inverts many of its meanings, replacing the Marxist themes of Native Son with a fundamentally nihilistic vision of life.
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Cassuto, Leonard. “A Father’s Law, 1950s Masculinity, and Richard Wright’s Agony over Integration.” In New Readings in the 21st Century. Edited by Alice Mikal Craven and William E. Dow. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
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Reads the violence and rape in Wright’s fiction within the context of his ambivalence over the course of the American civil rights movement.
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Kiuchi, Toru and Noboru Fukushima. “Wright and Hughes: Chicago and Two Major African American Writers.” Nihon University College of Industrial Technology Studies Report 48 (June 2015): 1–10.
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The first half of the essay deals with Wright’s A Father’s Law. The unfinished quest of the novel will gradually be made clear in due consideration of his biographical facts, which the author made full use in retrospect of the indefinitely postponed April 1938 wedding with Marion Sawyer.
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Ward, Jerry W., Jr. “Richard Wright, A Father’s Law.” African American Review 43.2–3 (2009): 519–521.
DOI: 10.1353/afa.2009.0024Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
There is a strong contrast between how the abyss between father and son is depicted in The Long Dream and how Wright maps the territory between son and father in A Father’s Law. The Long Dream faithfully renders the hypocrisy of law and order in the segregated South, whereas A Father’s Law depicts the ambiguity in the patriarchal law and prejudices in the desegregated North.
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Wright, Julia. “Introduction.” In A Father’s Law. By Richard Wright, v–xiii. New York: HarperCollins, 2008.
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Julia Wright, one of Wright’s daughters, was the first to read this unfinished novel. A Father’s Law, she wrote to Hugh Van Dusen, editorial director of HatrperCollins, “is one of those rare instances of a thriller within a thriller in our literature” (p. v). As for Wright’s characterization in the novel, she believes that Ruddy Turner, a father, is not Richard Wright, and that Tommy, Turner’s son, is not Julia Wright.
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Reference Works
The primary materials on Richard Wright are listed in the bibliography of each of the major biographies: Fabre 1973 and Rowley 2001, both cited under An American Life, 1908–1945: Overviews (and other sections). Annotated bibliographies of the secondary materials—reviews and critical essays on Wright’s writings—are provided in Kinnamon 1988 and Kinnamon 2006. Kinnamon 1988 covers the period 1933–1982. Kinnamon 2006, covering the period 1983–2003, is a continuation of Kinnamon 1988. While Kinnamon 1988 remains the most comprehensive bibliography of secondary materials for any American writer, Kinnamon 2006 reflects the expanded interest in Wright’s life and, more importantly, the recent commentary directed at the artistic qualities of his writings. Kiuchi and Hakutani 2014 is a reference work that documents Wright’s journals, articles, letters, and writings, as well as his letters to and from friends, associates, writers, and public figures. This volume documents the ways Wright responded to and wrote unflinchingly about the black experience in the United States and abroad. Ward and Butler 2008 is a reference work that provides all kinds of information on Wright’s writings, concepts, themes, and techniques, as well as on other writers and philosophers with whom Wright was associated and whose writings influenced Wright.
Kinnamon, Keneth, comp. A Richard Wright Bibliography: Fifty Years of Criticism and Commentary, 1933–1982. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1988.
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This volume constitutes a bibliography of 13,117 annotated items published from 1933 to 1982 concerning Richard Wright. The most comprehensive such list ever compiled for any American writer, it is the result of thirteen years of effort, during which Kinnamon had substantial help at various stages from Joseph Benson, Michel Fabre, and Craig Werner. Yoshinobu Hakutani and Toru Kiuchi contributed over 300 annotations of Japanese publications on Richard Wright.
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Kinnamon, Keneth, comp. Richard Wright: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism and Commentary, 1983–2003. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006.
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This bibliography follows Kinnamon’s earlier bibliography, Kinnamon 1988, which covers criticism and commentary published between 1933 and 1982. Arranged by year, the volume includes 8,660 entries of substantial and brief references to Wright’s life and work. This bibliography includes over 200 annotations of Japanese publications. The supplements from 2004–2014 are available online from The Project on the History of Black Writing which has embedded “Making the Wright Connection.”
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Kiuchi, Toru, and Yoshinobu Hakutani. Richard Wright: A Documented Chronology, 1908–1960. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014.
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This minutely detailed, comprehensive chronology documents Wright’s life and work. Part One covers Wright’s life through the year 1946, the period in which he published his best-known books, such as Native Son and Black Boy. Part Two covers the final fifteen years of his life in exile, a prolific period in which he wrote two novels, four works of nonfiction, and four thousand haiku. Each part begins with a historical and critical introduction.
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Ward, Jerry W., Jr., and Robert J. Butler, eds. The Richard Wright Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2008.
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This volume, in 447 double-columned pages, covers a wealth of topics concerning Richard Wright, contributed by twenty Wright scholars, including Ward and Butler. The categorized subjects include publishing names and information; awards, conferences, and historical/political events; African American culture; nonpolitical events; film and photography; genres of literature; magazines and newspapers; people; places, works by Wright; works by other writers who influenced Wright; drama; essays and manuscripts; collections; poems; short fiction; introductions and forewords. The volume begins with an introduction that provides biographical information.
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Article
- African American Deathways
- African American Doctors
- African American Language
- African American Masculinity
- African American Sculpture and Sculptors
- African American Writers and Communism
- African Americans in Cincinnati
- African Americans in Los Angeles
- Afro-Latinos
- Afro-Pessimism
- Agriculture and Agricultural Labor
- Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
- AME Church
- American Military, Blacks in the
- American Negro Theatre, The
- Anglo-African Newspaper, The
- Animal and African American History, The
- Antislavery Movement
- Apollo Theater
- Atheism and Agnosticism
- Baldwin, James
- Baraka, Amiri
- Bearden, Romare
- Bible
- Black Codes and Slave Codes
- Black Press in the United States, The
- Black Radicalism in 20th-Century United States
- Black Theology
- Black Women Writers in the United States
- Blackface Minstrelsy
- Blues
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
- Bureau Of Refugees, Freedmen, And Abandoned Lands (BRFAL)
- Butler, Octavia
- Chesnutt, Charles W.
- Chicago, African Americans in
- Chicago Renaissance
- Civil Rights Movement
- Delany, Martin R.
- Dominican Republic, Annexation of
- Douglass, Frederick
- Equiano, Olaudah
- Eugenics
- Federal Government, Segregation in
- Federal Writers’ Project
- Fiction, Urban
- Fisk Jubilee Singers
- Fitzgerald, Ella
- Folklore
- Food and African American Culture
- Forman, James
- Francophone Writing
- Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, The
- Gates, Jr., Henry Louis
- Gospel Music
- Health and Medicine
- Higher Education, Black Women in
- Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the United...
- HIV/AIDS from an African American Studies Perspective
- Holiday, Billie
- Hopkins, Pauline
- Incarceration
- Johnson, James Weldon
- Liberation Theology
- Literacy
- Lynching
- Meredith March against Fear
- Middle Class, Black
- Moore, Audley
- Morrision, Toni
- Muslims, Black
- Nat Turner’s Rebellion
- Native Americans and African Americans
- Negro League Baseball
- New African Diaspora
- New Negro
- Newton, Huey P.
- No Child Left Behind
- Pan-Africanism
- Parks, Rosa
- Political Resistance
- Print Culture
- Reconstruction in Literature and Intellectual Culture
- Reparations and the African Diaspora
- Revolutionary War and African Americans, The
- Robeson, Paul
- Scottsboro Trials
- Settler Colonialism and African Americans
- Simone, Nina
- Slavery, Visual Representations of
- Smith, Bessie
- Social Science and Civil Rights
- “Soul!” (Famous!) TV Program with Ellis Haizlip
- Speculative Fiction
- Suburbanization
- Theater and Performance in the 19th Century
- Theater in the 20th Century
- Till, Emmett, The Lynching of
- Tricksters in African, African American, and Caribbean Fol...
- Underground Railroad
- United States House of Representatives, African Americans ...
- Urbanization
- Visual Arts
- Wells, Ida B.
- Wheatley, Phillis
- Whitehead, Colson
- Whiteness
- Woodrow Wilson, Administration of
- World War II
- Wright, Richard
