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Apr 24, 2024 · Richard Wright, novelist and short-story writer who was among the first African American writers to protest white treatment of Blacks, notably in his novel Native Son (1940) and his autobiography, Black Boy (1945). He inaugurated the tradition of protest explored by other Black writers after World War II.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Who Was Richard Wright?
- Early Life
- Chicago, New York and The Communist Party
- 'Uncle Tom's Children'
- 'Native son'
- 'Black Boy'
- Later Years and Career
Richard Wright was an African American writer and poet who published his first short story at the age of 16. Later, he found employment with the Federal Writers' Project and received critical acclaim for Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of four stories. He is well-known for his 1940 bestseller Native Son and his 1945 autobiography, Black Boy.
Richard Nathaniel Wright was born on September 4, 1908, in Roxie, Mississippi. The grandson of slaves and the son of a sharecropper, Wright was largely raised by his mother, a caring woman who became a single parent after her husband left the family when Wright was five years old. Schooled in Jackson, Mississippi, Wright only managed to get a ninth...
In 1927, Wright finally left the South and moved to Chicago, where he worked at a post office and also swept streets. Like so many Americans struggling through the Depression, Wright fell prey to bouts of poverty. Along the way, his frustration with American capitalism led him to join the Communist Party in 1932. When he could, Wright continued to ...
In 1938, Wright published Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of four stories that marked a significant turning point in his career. The stories earned him a $500 prize from Story magazine and led to a 1939 Guggenheim Fellowship.
More acclaim followed in 1940 with the publication of the novel Native Son, which told the story of a 20-year-old African American man named Bigger Thomas. The book brought Wright fame and freedom to write. It was a regular atop the bestseller lists and became the first book by an African American writer to be selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club...
In 1945, Wright published Black Boy, which offered a moving account of his childhood and youth in the South. It also depicts extreme poverty and his accounts of racial violence against Black people.
After living mainly in Mexico from 1940 to 1946, Wright became so disillusioned with both the Communist Party and white America that he went off to Paris, where he lived the rest of his life as an expatriate. He continued to write novels, including The Outsider (1953) and The Long Dream (1958), and nonfiction, such as Black Power (1954) and White M...
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Richard Nathaniel Wright (September 4, 1908 – November 28, 1960) was an American author of novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially related to the plight of African Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries suffering discrimination and violence.
Nationality: American. Richard Nathaniel Wright (September 4, 1908 – November 28, 1960) was an African-American novelist and short story writer, who is arguably the most prominent and influential African-American novelist of the first half of the twentieth century. Wright's works, most notably the story collection Uncle Tom's Children and the ...
Jun 11, 2018 · Richard Wright. The works of Richard Wright (1908-1960), politically sophisticated and socially involved African American author, are notable for their passionate sincerity. He was perceptive about the universal problems that plague mankind. Richard Wright was born in Natchez, Miss., on Sept. 4, 1908.
May 24, 2017 · Throughout his life he struggled to balance a strong sense of individualism with a desire to be a spokesperson for oppressed people, first specifically for African Americans, and then later for victims of racism and political oppression throughout the globe. Wright’s literary output was prolific.
Jan 21, 2007 · Despite his major and often abrupt political and sociological shifts, he consistently promoted black culture and black protest that he saw emerging in urban life. His writings, including his acclaimed autobiographical Black Boy (1945), in many ways presaged the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
