September 4, 1908 in Adams County, Mississippi was the day Richard Wright was born into a life of poverty, and racial discrimination. He was quoted as saying, "I was born too far back in the woods to hear the train whistle..." The eldest of two boys, Richard was the son of Nathaniel Wright and Ella Wilson.
When he was fifteen, Wright knew he wanted to be a writer. Known as a poet first, through his writing, his goal was to bring two worlds together, one Black, and one White, and make them one. His most successful work, Native Son, a Chicago story about a Mississippi boy, 'Bigger Thomas,' in New York had an autobiographical tone. Native Son sold 250,000 hardback copies in six weeks at five dollars apiece.
His marriage to Ellen Poplar, a white woman,
like his writing was controversial. The hurt and pain from his early years in the
south drove him to write as he did. The author of 16 books, some of which include,
Black Boy, The Outsider, and American Hunger, Richard Wright died mysteriously of a heart
attack at the age of 52 in Paris, France.
- Author biography written by Scott D.
Haskins, Sr. for AALBC.com
A Father's Law
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Introduction by Richard Wright's daughter Julia Wirght
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial (January 8, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 006134916X
ISBN-13: 978-0061349164
Never before published, the final work of one of America's greatest writers.
A Father's Law is
the novel Richard Wright, acclaimed author of Black Boy and Native Son,
never completed. Written during a six-week period near the end of his
life, it appears in print for the first time, an important addition to
this American master's body of work, submitted by his daughter and
literary executor, Julia, who writes:
It comes from his guts and ends at the hero's "breaking point." It explores many themes favored by my father like guilt and innocence, the difficult relationship between the generations, the difficulty of being a black policeman and father, the difficulty of being both those things and suspecting that your own son is the murderer. It intertwines astonishingly modern themes for a novel written in 1960.
Prescient, raw, powerful, and fascinating, A Father's Law is the final gift from a literary giant.
Julia Wright Photo Credit: C-Span2 BookTV Television Broadcast Screen Shot Captured April 2008.
Native Son
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ISBN: 006083756X
Pub. Date: August 2005
Format: Paperback, 504pp
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Arnold Rampersad (Introduction)
Widely acclaimed as one of the finest books ever written on race and class divisions in America, this powerful novel reflects the forces of poverty, injustice, and hopelessness that continue to shape out society.
Sacred Fire
Richard Wright was born in 1908, thc first of two sons of a sharecropper. After
publishing his first novel, Uncle Tom's Children, in 1938, Wright discovered to
his alarm that "he had written a book which even bankers" daughters could read
and feel good about. He swore that his next novel would be different. That book
was Native Son, the story of Bigger Thomas's short and tragic life, which plumbs
the blackest depths of human experience.
Native Son is told in three parts 'Fear, Flight, and Fate' which sum up,
perfectly, Bigger Thomas's life. Badly in need of a job to help support his
family, the ne'er-do-well Bigger goes to work as a driver for the Daltons, a
rich white family. As he is pulled every which way by his mother, who wanted him
to do the things she wanted him to do; by Mrs. Dalton, who wanted him to do the
things she felt that he should have wanted to do; by Mary Dalton, the young
mistress of the house, who challenged him to stand up for things he didn't
understand; and by his need for independence and autonomy in the midst of a
dependent situation'he missteps, accidentally killing Mary.
Native Son is not an uplifting book with a happy Hollywood resolution. It has been criticized for its cardboard portrayal of black pathology and heavy-handed Marxist message. But the book is an absolutely gripping potboiler that is also intellectually provocative. It is on one level a seedy, simple story of an unsympathetic character meeting his fate at his own hands, and on another an illuminating drama of an individual consciousness that challenges traditional definitions of heroism, character, and integrity. Bigger was less a character caught in a specific criminal activity than he was a crime waiting to happen.'Sacred Fire
Black Boy
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ISBN: 0060929782
Pub. Date: December 2003
Format: Paperback, 448pp
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
This incredible bestselling classic is Richard Wright's unforgettable and eloquent autobiography of growing up in the Jim Crow South.
Sacred Fire
Black Boy is Richard Wright's unforgettable story of growing up in the Jim Crow
South. Published in 1945, it is often considered a fictionalized autobiography
or an autobiographical novel because of Wright's use of fiction techniques (and
possibly fictional events) to tell his story. Nevertheless, the book is a
lyrical and skillfully wrought description of Wright's hungry youth in rural
Mississippi and Memphis, told from the perspective of the adult Wright, who was
still trying to come to grips with the cruel deprivations and humiliations of
his childhood.
Life in the pre'civil rights South was intensely alienating for young Richard. At every turn, his desire to communicate was stunted, whether by famiIy members who insisted he "hush!" or by teachers who harassed and mocked him. He was surrounded by people he considered contemptibly ignorant, people who willingly allowed their lives to be restricted by tradition and authority no matter how illegitimate or self-destructive. Whether they were racist whites or passive, uncompassionate blacks, his fellow southerners viewed Richard's independence and intelligence with suspicion and scorned and humiliated him for his family's poverty. He lashed out by hitting the streets: He was already drinking by the time he turned six, and he fought constantly. He finally found his outlet in writing; by the end of the book, he decided that there was nothing he could ever do to improve his life in the South and committed to moving to Chicago to pursue his art.
When first published, Black Boy was considered by many to be an angry attack on the racist South because of Wright's hard-hitting portrayal of the racism he faced, not to mention his already-acquired reputation as a "protest writer." But the book's value goes deeper than that: Wright bears witness to the American struggle for the right of self-definition. His own quest to escape the suffocating world of his childhood and find a place where he could freely exercise his individuality, creativity, and integrity was ultimately successful. But Black Boy also offers insight into an entire culture of people, both black and white, who had unthinkingly accepted a narrowly prescribed course of life. As Wright put it, "[though] they lived in America where in theory there existed equality of opportunity, they knew unerringly what to aspire to and what not to aspire to." Despite Wright's stifling environment, his story is inspirational for its portrait of how a black boy shucked off the limited expectations of those around him and dared to aspire.'Sacred Fire
Uncle Tom's Children
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ISBN: 0060587148
Pub. Date: December 2003
Format: Paperback, 336pp
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
This collection by the renowned author of Native Son brings to life post-slavery characters in their full psychological and emotional depth.
Set in the American Deep South, each of the powerful novellas collected here concerns an aspect of the lives of black people in the postslavery era, exploring their resistance to white racism and oppression. Published in 1938, this was the first book from Wright, who would continue on to worldwide fame as the author of the novels Native Son and Black Boy.
Eight Men
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ISBN: 0060976810
Pub. Date: October 1996
Format: Paperback, 242pp
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
"Wright's unrelenting bleak landscape was not merely that of the Deep South, or of Chicago, but that of the world, of the human heart," said James Baldwin, and here, in these powerful stories, Richard Wright takes readers into this landscape one again. Eight Men presents eight stories of black men living at violent odds with the white world around them. As they do in his classic novels, the themes here reflect Wright's views on racism and his fascination with what he called "the struggle of the individual in America."
Author Biography: Richard Wright won international renown for his powerful and visceral depiction of the black experience. He stands today alongside such African-American luminaries as Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison, and two of his novels, Native Son and Black Boy, are required reading in high schools and colleges across the nation. He died in 1960.
Rite of Passag
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David Diaz (Illustrator)
ISBN: 006447111X
Pub. Date: January 1996
Age Range: 12 and up
Format: Paperback, 160pp
Publisher: HarperCollins Children's Books
When fifteen-year-old Johnny Gibbs is told that he is really a foster child, he runs off into the streets of Harlem and meets up with a gang that wants him to participate in a mugging. Includes criticism of Wright's fiction.
Harlem. The late 1940s. Fifteen-year-old Johnny Gibbs loves his parents, respects his teachers, and is a model student. Suddenly, his familiar world falls apart. Johnny learns he is really a foster child who the welfare authorities have decreed now must go and live with another family. Stunned by the revelation, Johnny runs away. The startling events that follow, during Johnny's nightlong confrontation with alienation and loneliness, will inexorably push him past the frontiers of childhood and into an unknown, violent world beyond. Rite of Passage, Richard Wright's never-before-published story of Johnny Gibbs's fall from grace, is as pertinent to the fate of many young people today as it was when it was first conceived nearly fifty years ago.
12 Million Black Voices
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by Richard Wright, Edwin Rosskam, United States Farm Security Administration, Edwin Rosskam (Photographer), David Bradley (Foreword by)
ISBN: 1560254467
Pub. Date: December 2002
Format: Paperback, 152pp
Publisher: Avalon Publishing Group
12 Million Black Voices, first published in 1941, combines Wright's prose with startling photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam from the Security Farm Administration files compiled during the Great Depression. The photographs include works by such giants as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Arthur Rothstein. From crowded, run-down farm shacks to Harlem storefront churches, the photos depict the lives of black people in America - their misery and weariness under rural poverty, their spiritual strength, and their lives in northern ghettos. Wright's accompanying text narrates the story of these pictures and delivers a powerful commentary on the origins and history of black oppression in this country. Included in the new edition is a foreword by acclaimed historian Noel Ignatiev, author of How the Irish Became White and coeditor of the quarterly journal Race Traitor.
The Outsider
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Format: Paperback, 629pp.
ISBN: 0060812486
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date: December 1992
The Outsider is Richard Wright's compelling story of a black
man's attempt to escape his past.
Author Biography: Richard Wright won international renown for his powerful
and visceral depiction of the black experience. He stands today alongside
such African-American luminaries as Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and
Toni Morrison, and two of his novels, Native Son and Black Boy, are required
reading in high schools and colleges across the nation. He died in 1960.
The African American Audio Experience
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Format: Compact Disc - Abridged, 5 CDs
ISBN: 006053527X
Pub. Date: January 2003
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
One of the most significant occurrences in America during the 20th century
was the rise of African-American writers to the forefront of literature.
Documenting their views on American culture and its tragic and glorious history,
African-American writers' contributions reflected their struggle for equality
and paved the way into a brighter future for their country. This collection
includes selections of some of the best of those works, with an original
introduction by Nikki Giovanni:
Black Boy by Richard Wright. A classic of American autobiography, this subtly crafted narrative chronicles one man's coming of age in the Jim Crow South. Performed by Brock Peters.
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. An emotionally lacerating landmark of American theater, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun is presented here with a full cast performance starring Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis.
Excerpts from The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. A collection of poems from one of the most commanding voices to grace America's political and poetic landscape. Read by the author.
Excerpts from the "Tall Tales" Chapter of Every Tounge Got to Confess by Zora Neale Hurston. Collected in the 1920s, these stories pay tribute to the richness of Black vernacular and reflect -- with wit, wisdom, compassion, and style -- the sorrows and joys of the African-American heritage. Performed by Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis.
Excerpts from Langston Hughes Reads. Arare and exceptional recording on one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century.
Three poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. "We Real Cool," "Malcolm X," and "The Sermon on the Warpland." Performed by Ruby Dee.
