The following information comes from a Native Son / Richard Wright web site whose URL I'm trying to relocate. Until then, here's the text from that site.
"The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever," wrote Irving Howe in
1963. Few critics have disputed this statement, and most would agree that the impact of Richard
Wright's writings on American culture comes not just from his technique and style, but also from
the particular effect his ideas and attitudes have had on American life. In an effort to gauge the
extent of Wright's influence, Yoshinobu Hakutani analyzes his work both as art and as a discourse
on race.
Taking into consideration the social and cultural milieu of Wright's time, Hakutani compares and
contrasts Wright's works with those by other writers dealing with similar subjects. For example,
he discusses Native Son in comparison with Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson and in contrast with
Dreiser's An American Tragedy. In a similar vein he weighs The Outsider, a controversial novel
among critics, against Camus's The Stranger. And The Man Who Lived Underground is read as an
existentialist work that contains elements of Zen philosophy.
Hakutani also studies Wright's neglected works of nonfiction, examining how they place Wright's
diverse racial, cultural, economic, and political ideas within the context of his American, African
American, European, Pan-African, and Asian experiences. Whereas Wright is primarily concerned
with European colonialism in Black Power, religion and Catholicism come under scrutiny in Pagan
Spain, and The Color Curtain brings together all of these issues. Hakutani concludes his book with
a chapter on Wright's poetics, determining that Wright followed Japanese aesthetics, and that the
best of his four thousand haiku marvelously reflect the spirit of nature and, occasionally, Zen.
Richard Wright has fascinated literary critics, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and
historians the world over. Establishing Wright's work as a prophetic discourse on race and culture
unparalleled in world literature, Richard Wright and Racial Discourse will be a welcome addition to
American literary and cultural studies.
To mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Richard Wright's iconoclastic autobiography, Black Boy,
Mississippi Educational Television and the Independent Television Service (ITVS) present the first in-depth look
at the African-American writer who changed the face of American literature. When asked in 1945 why he wrote
Black Boy, a harrowing account of his Southern childhood, Wright replied that he wanted to "give [his] tongue
to voiceless Negro boys." Quoting Walt Whitman, he added, "Not until the sun ceases to shine on you will I
disown you." Fifty years later, Richard Wright's passion for words is depicted in the first full-length
documentary on his life. Richard Wright - Black Boy will air on PBS on September 4, 1995 at 10:00 p.m.
EDT (check local listings). September 4 marks the 87th anniversary of Wright's birth.
Recently, the program was awarded a 1994 Southeast Regional Emmy. The program was co-produced by the
BBC and will air in the BBC series "Bookmark" this fall. Written, produced, and directed by Emmy-winner
Madison Davis Lacy, the documentary chronicles Wright's struggle, overcoming poverty and fear to earn
recognition as one of America's most important writers.
Producer Madison Davis Lacy, whose credits include Eyes on the Prize II, drew from hundreds of sources to
reveal the persona of a man critics viewed as a literary genius. Three years in the making, Richard Wright -
Black Boy skillfully intertwines dramatic excerpts from Wright's own work with historical footage and
recollections from his daughter Julia as well as friends, associates, and fellow writers such as Ralph Ellison and
Margaret Walker Alexander.
"I was initially interested in pursuing Wright's expatriation, and the phenomenon of expatriation as a dynamic in
African-American culture," says Lacy. "What I discovered was a self-taught literary genius of tremendous
political conviction. At 19 years old, Wright told a friend, 'I want my life to count for something.' Somehow he
was able to crystallize that determination and his understanding of racial oppression into a reason to write on
behalf of himself and his people."
Born outside Natchez, Mississippi, on September 4, 1908, Wright was the son of an illiterate sharecropper. He
developed his fascination with the power of words at an early age. His classmates at Jackson's Smith-Robertson
School recall that he always had his head in a book. Reading reinforced his dissatisfaction with life in the
segregated South and, like thousands of other African-Americans, he resolved to go north, to Chicago. He
survived the Depression as a street-sweeper and a postal worker until he found encouragement to write from the
Communist Party. Soon he was at the forefront of the "school for social protest" in Chicago, a literary movement
which gave rise to a wealth of progressive literature. As Wright's popularity grew, so did the displeasure of
Party officials intent upon influencing his writing, eventually causing him to break with the Party. He left
Chicago in 1937 for New York where "he could get published," according to Margaret Walker Alexander. He
published his first book, Uncle Tom's Children, to good reviews in 1938, but it was his second, Native Son,
that brought Wright critical and public acclaim.
In 1940, Native Son soared to the top of the best-seller lists and became the first book by an African-American
author to be a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. "His new book makes it clearer than ever that he has one of the
most notable gifts in U.S. writing, black or white," claimed Time magazine. The public seemed to agree, sending
the book to fourth place among fiction sales for the year.
Wright married for the second time in 1941 and weathered the war years in New York lecturing and writing his
autobiography, Black Boy, published in 1945. Black Boy also became a runaway best seller, aided by a major
photo spread in Life magazine. After the war, Wright, as a former Communist party member, became the subject
of FBI monitoring and experienced overt acts of racial hostility. In 1946 Wright traveled to Paris and London,
where he was welcomed by his American expatriate and European literary contemporaries. After his return to
New York in early 1947, Wright decided to move his family to France where he felt he could write unimpeded
by social and government interference. He never returned to the States, though he always considered himself an
American.
Living in Europe, Wright's interests took on an expanding global view. He lectured and wrote a series of non-fiction essays and books reflecting on the position of race in a quickly changing post-war world; he took a particular interest in pan-African issues. By the time of his sudden death in 1960 at the age of 52, Wright had irrevocably changed the principles governing African-American writing and left an indelible mark on the American imagination. His books still sell briskly and continue to be mainstays of high school and college literature and composition classes. "Wright was one of the people who made me conscious of the need to struggle," offers writer Amiri Baraka. In a 1963 essay on Wright, critic Irving Howe wrote, "The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever."
Wright biographer Constance Webb reflects, "He was a storyteller -- because he wrote these stories; but he also
lived these stories." Prominent author Ralph Ellison, in his last filmed interview before his death in 1994,
assessed, "I don't know whether he always knew where he was going, and I think that is a good sign because
you don't just create a novel, you are created by it."
With original music by Randy Klein and R.L. Burnside and narration by actor J.A. Preston, Richard Wright -
Black Boy recognizes one of America's most influential writers and effectively demonstrates his lifelong belief
that "words can be weapons against injustice."
Richard Wright - Black Boy is a public television presentation of Mississippi Educational Television and the
Independent Television Service (ITVS) with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Major
funding was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funding was provided by the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Ford Foundation, Independent Television Service, the BBC, the
National Endowment for the Arts, the National Black Programming Consortium, the Southern Educational
Communications Association, and the Foundation for Public Broadcasting in Mississippi, Inc. Richard
Wright - Black Boy is a co-production of Mississippi Educational Television and the BBC.
Photos, preview tapes, and interview opportunities are available. For more information on Richard Wright -
Black Boy contact publicist Tina Wynn, 1020 Grand Concourse, Suite 16C, Bronx, NY 10451; call
718/590-4368; fax 718/293-5034.
Amiri Baraka
Author/poet/essayist/music critic/ musician/playwright/professor, State University of New York at Stony
Brook
John Henrik Clarke
Noted historian/professor emeritus, Hunter College, New York
Margaret Walker Alexander
Lecturer/professor of English, Livingstone College/author, For My People, Jubilee/Wright Biographer,
Daemonic Genius
Maryemma Graham
Literary critic/Professor, Northeastern University, Boston
Ben Burns
Journalist/former Communist Party member/executive editor of Ebony magazine
Cedric Robinson
Political scientist
Ralph Ellison
Author, Invisible Man
Allen Willis
Former resident of Chicago's "South Side"
Michael Dyson
Literary critic/professor of communications studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Joyce Ann Joyce
Literary critic/author, Richard Wright's Art of Tragedy; 1986
Constance Webb
Wright biographer, Richard Wright: A Biography; 1968
Essie Lee Davis
Wright's classmate, Jackson, Mississippi
Minnie Farrish
Wright's classmate, Jackson, Mississippi
Eugene Frederick
Postal worker
Ishmael Flory
Activist
Mark Naison
Historian/professor of African-American studies, Fordham University, New York
Thomas Cripps
Film historian
Willie Morris
Author, North Towards Home/former editor- in-chief, Harper's magazine
Ollie Harrington
Artist
Michel Fabre
Essayist/editor/professor at the Sorbonne, Paris/Wright biographer, Richard Wright: Books and Writers
Julia Wright
Wright's eldest daughter/freelance journalist/special consultant to the documentary
Roscoe Stallworth
Musician, Paris
George Whitman
Bookseller, Shakespeare & Co., Paris
Richard Gibson
Journalist, Paris
Jerry Ward
Literary critic/professor of English, Tougaloo College, Mississippi
Fiction
Uncle Tom's Children: Four Novellas (1938)
Native Son (1940)
Uncle Tom's Children: Five Long Stories (1940)
The Outsider (1953)
Savage Holiday (1954)
The Long Dream (1958)
Eight Men (1961)
Lawd Today! (1963)
American Hunger (1977)
Rite of Passage (1994)
Non-Fiction
Twelve Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (1941)
Black Boy: A Recollection of Childhood and Youth (1945)
Black Power: A Record of Reactions in a Land of Pathos (1954)
The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference (1956)
Pagan Spain (1957)
White Man, Listen! (1957)
Recent Editions of Wright Works
Early works: Lawd Today, Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, Library of America edition (edited by
Arnold Rampersad) (1991)
Later works: Black Boy (American Hunger), The Outsider, Library of America edition (edited by Arnold
Rampersad) (1991)
Savage Holiday (afterword by Gerald Early) (1994)
The Color Curtain (afterword by Amritjit Singh) (1994)
Pagan Spain (introduction by Faith Berry) (1995)
White Man, Listen! (introduction by Cedric Robinson) (1995)
Black Power (introduction by Amritjit Singh) (1995)
Selected Essays by Richard Wright
"Blueprint for Negro Writing," New Challenge (Fall 1937)
"Portrait of Harlem," New York Panorama (1938)
"How 'Bigger' Was Born," Saturday Review (June 1, 1940)
"Not My People's War," New Masses (June 17, 1941)
"I Tried to Be a Communist," Atlantic Monthly (August- September 1944), later collected in Richard
Crossman (ed.), The God That Failed (1949)
"Introduction" to Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City by St. Clair Drake and
Horace Cayton (1945)
"How Jim Crow Feels," True magazine (November, 1946)
"A World View of the American Negro," Twice A Year (1946-47)
"Urban Misery in an American City: Juvenile Delinquency in Harlem," Twice A Year (1947-48)
"There Is Always Another Cafe," The Kiosk (1953)
"Foreword" to Blues Fell This Morning by Paul Oliver (1960)
Selected Poetry by Richard Wright
"A Red Love Note," Left Front (January-February, 1934)
"Rest for the Weary," Left Front (January-February, 1934)
"Strength," The Anvil (March-April, 1934)
"Children of the Dead and Forgotten Gods," The Anvil (March- April 1934)
"Everywhere Burning Waters Rise," Left Front (May-June 1934)
"I Have Seen Black Hands," New Masses (June 26, 1936)
"Obsession," Midland Left (February, 1935)
"Rise and Live," Midland Left (February, 1935)
"I Am a Red Slogan," International Literature (April, 1935)
"Between the World and Me," Partisan Review (July-August, 1935)
"We of the Streets," New Masses (April 13, 1937)
"King Joe" (aka "Joe Louis Blues") song lyrics, reprinted in New York Amsterdam Star News (October
18, 1941)
"Haikus," Studies in Black Literature (Summer, 1970)
"Ten Haiku," New Letters (Winter, 1971)
Selected Biographies and Criticism on Richard Wright
Harold Bloom (ed.), Richard Wright: Modern Critical Views (1987)
Michel Fabre, The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright (1973); second edition (1993)
Michel Fabre, The World of Richard Wright (1985)
Michel Fabre, Richard Wright: Books and Writers (1990)
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, Richard Wright: Critical Perspectives Past and Present
(1993)
Addison Gayle, Richard Wright: The Ordeal of a Native Son (1980)
Joyce Ann Joyce, Richard Wright's Art of Tragedy (1986)
Keneth Kinnamon, The Emergence of Richard Wright: A Study of Literature and Society (1972)
Keneth Kinnamon, A Richard Wright Bibliography: Fifty Years of Criticism and Commentary,
1932-1982 (1988)
Keneth Kinnamon (ed.), New Essays on Native Son (1990)
Keneth Kinnamon and Michel Fabre (eds.), Conversations with Richard Wright (1993)
Edward Margolies, The Art of Richard Wright (1969)
Eugene Miller, Voice of a Native Son: The Poetics of Richard Wright (1990)
Margaret Walker, Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius (1988)
Constance Webb, Richard Wright: A Biography (1968)
John A. Williams, The Most Native of Sons: A Biography of Richard Wright (1970)
"The Richard Wright Newsletter" (Richard Wright Circle, 480 Nightingale Hall, Northeastern University,
Boston, MA 02115) provides discussions of new developments in Wright scholarship and contains an annual
bibliography.
Questions and Activities for Students
1.Write an assessment of RICHARD WRIGHT: BLACK BOY with regard to its usefulness
in showing connections between the facts of a writer's life and his works.
2.Compare BLACK BOY with Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody. Despite
the differences in age and gender, do both writers suggest that a sense of place has special
importance for the African-American writer from the South?
3. Compare BLACK BOY with Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez. Write a paper
on how an autobiographer, considered to be in a minority group, uses diverse strategies to
control self-representation against the constraints of ethnicity and language.
4. In 1940, the year Native Son was published, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
(1939) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Examine the critical reception both of these novels
received. Discuss why these equally compelling books occupy rather different places in
American literary standards.
5. Compare the small number of Wright's haiku in print with classical Japanese examples of
this poetic form. Explain the aesthetic difference between Wright's poems and those he
might have used as models. Write some haiku of your own.
6. Black Power, Pagan Spain, The Color Curtain, and White Man, Listen! are
some of Wright's works. Compare the prose in Wright's early essays from the late 1930's
and early 1940's with the prose of one of the books listed above. What remarkable
differences do you detect?
7. Examine Uncle Tom's Children, BLACK BOY, and Native Son and try to identify
what might be called existential elements. To what in Wright's life experiences might we attribute his
affinity for existentialism?
8. Clips from the movie versions (1951 and 1987) of Native Son are used in the documentary. View
these movie versions after reading the novel. How does the modification of the plot in these movie
versions affect your regard for Wright's novel?
QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES FOR STUDENTS
Before Viewing the Documentary
1.Richard Wright was born in 1908, and died in 1960. What significant developments or
major changes occurred in the sciences, American government, economics, politics,
literature, technology, and the arts between these dates?
2.What amendments were added to the United States Constitution during the period 1908 to
1960?
3.What major changes occurred in race relations between l908 and
1960? Especially address those that occurred in 1954 and later.
4.Interview people who were born in the 1920's and 1930's. If
available, use the Internet for interviews. How do the interviewees
remember and describe social and cultural changes prior to 1960?
5. Interview family members or others, born before 1960, who have
lived in Mississippi, Chicago, New York, Paris, or West Africa.
Inquire about the problems that were of special importance to them. Do any remember the
Great Depression?
6.What did the term "Jim Crow" mean in the South?
7. What economic and social conditions may have encouraged large numbers of blacks from
the South to migrate to urban areas in the northern and western parts of the U.S. in the
early twentieth century? Did this migration have an impact on the South as a region?
8. What was the impact of World War I on the Southern economy? Was the impact of World
War II radically different?
9. Discuss or write a report on the Harlem Renaissance. Who were some of the
major writers and artists during this period? How does the Harlem
Renaissance differ from what has been called the Jazz Age? Were basic
American values modified by changes in music, dress, and entertainment
during the period of the Harlem Renaissance?
10. What are the major differences between plantations before the Civil War and
those that still existed in the twentieth century?
11. What is sharecropping? Is the analogy between economic slavery and
sharecropping a fair one? Why?
12. Who was H.L.Mencken? Why did many Southerners dislike him?
13. Define the following terms: socialism, fascism, capitalism, democracy,
colonialism, marxism, communism. What philosophical and political beliefs
are embedded in each of these terms? Discuss how one might become
disillusioned with each of the above philosophies and/or political belief
systems.
14.Who was Karl Marx? Identify several of his major works. Why did his
theories about social organization and the relation between labor and capital
have international appeal in the twentieth century?
15. In what areas of American life did Communism have the strongest influence
between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II? What
was the reaction of the U.S. to the 1918 Bolshevik Revolution?
16.What does the term "alienation" mean? How is it used in psychology? How is
it used in discussions of political behaviors?
17.What is the image of African-American culture today and how has it changed over the last fifty years?
What seems not to have changed?
18.Define the word "ghetto." What is the historical meaning of the term? Do we use it appropriately today in
discussions of urban life?
19. What is the image of African-American culture today and how has it changed over the last fifty years?
What seems not to have changed?
QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES FOR STUDENTS
After Viewing the Documentary
1. Richard Wright was born in 1908, and Eudora Welty was born in 1909. Both
spent their formative years in Jackson, Mississippi. Compare Wright's depiction
of his childhood in BLACK BOY with Welty's reflections in One Writer's
Beginnings. What images of a Southern urban community emerge from the two
readings? Create a drawing, painting or three dimensional representation of your
image.
2.After reading BLACK BOY, write your own autobiography. In what ways are the dominant images in
Wright's autobiography similar or dissimilar to those in your own?
3. Identify the following people who are mentioned in the documentary: Langston Hughes, Benjamin
Davis, J.Edgar Hoover, James Baldwin, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois, Orson Welles, Margaret
Walker Alexander, Joyce Ann Joyce, William Faulkner, John Reed, Jack Conroy, Studs Terkel, Arna
Bontemps, Kwame Nkrumah, Katherine Dunham, Frank Yerby.
4.What impressed you the most about the documentary? Write a poem, story, or narrative about what had
the greatest impact on you. Illustrate your work.
5. Read some of Wright's short fictional works. Write a one act play based on one of these stories or
dramatize a section of Native Son.
6. Do you think that growing up in the South during Richard Wright's time was better or worse than
today? Give some reasons for your opinion.
7. Have you visited any of the places mentioned in the program? Contrast what you saw when you visited
and what you saw on the program.
8. What reasons can you give for Wright joining the Communist Party and what reasons can you give for
Wright leaving the Party and moving to Paris?
9. Assemble a collection of newspaper clippings and magazine articles about changes that are occurring on
the African continent. Discuss these stories in relation to the segment of the film that deals with Wright's
visit to Africa.
10.Write a paper on crime and violence from a teenager's perspective. Compare your ideas with the stories
of adolescent crime and violence in Native Son and Rite of Passage.
11.Watch broadcasts of trials on TV and read the trial section of Native Son. Report to your class on the
difference between contemporary court procedures and those represented in Wright's novel.
12.Write a brief paper on American writers who have chosen to live in foreign countries. How were their
choices similar or different from those Richard Wright made in choosing exile?
13. If you have access to the Internet, contact students in several of the countries that Richard Wright
visited. Ask them how familiar they are with Wright's works or the places mentioned in the
documentary.
II. Richard Wright: Secondary Sources Bibliography
Fabre, Michel and Charles T. Davis. Richard Wright: A Primary Bibliography.
Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982. A bibliography of Wright's published and unpublished works
in the Richard Wright Archive.
James Weldon Johnson Collection of Afro-American Literature, Beineke
Library, Yale University.
Kinnamon, Keneth [with Joseph Benson, Michel Fabre, and Craig Werner]. A Richard
Wright Bibliography: Fifty Years of Criticism and Commentary,
1933-1982. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988.
The most comprehensive bibliographic study of secondary sources, including books, scholarly
articles and reviews, newspaper reviews, doctoral dissertations, master's theses, handbook, study
guides, interviews, chapters in books, encyclopedia articles, and handbooks. Kinnamon has begun
to publish annual supplements, beginning with materials published in the"Richard Wright
Newsletter".
Biography
Fabre, Michel. The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright. New York: Morrow,
1973; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
Gayle, Addison. Richard Wright: Ordeal of a Native Son. New York: Doubleday,
1990.
Walker, Margaret. Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius. New York: Amistad, 1988.
Webb, Constance. Richard Wright: A Biography.New York: Putnam, 1968.
Williams, John A. The Most Native of Sons: A Biography of Richard Wright.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970.
Critical Studies: Books and Collections of Essays
Baker, Houston A., Jr., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Native Son.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972.
Brignano, Russell C. Richard Wright: An Introduction to the Ma and His
Works. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1970.
Butler, Robert. Native Son: The Emergence of a New Black Hero. Boston:
Twayne, 1991.
Fabre, Michel. Richard Wright: Books and Writers. Jackson: University Press of
Mississippi, 1990.
Fabre, Michel. The World of Richard Wright.Jackson: University Press of
Mississippi, 1985.
Fishburn, Katherine. Richard Wright's Hero: The Faces of a Rebel-Victim.
Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1977.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. and K. A. Appiah, eds. Richard Wright: Critical
Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistd, 1993.
Hakutani, Yoshinobu, ed. Critical Essays on Richard Wright. Boston: G. K. Hall,
1982.
Joyce, Joyce Ann. Richard Wright's Art of Tragedy. Iowa City: U of Iowa Press,
1986.
Kinnamon, Keneth and Michel Fabre, eds. Conversations with Richard Wright.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993.
Kinnamon, Keneth. The Emergence of Richard Wright: A Study Literature and
Society. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1973.
Kinnamon, Keneth, ed. New Essays on Native Son. New York: Cambridge UP,
1990.
Macksey, Richard and Frank E. Moorer, eds. Richard Wright: A Collection of
Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984.
Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1969.
Miller, Eugene E. Voice of a Native Son: The Poetics of Richard Wright. Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 1990.
Rampersad, Arnold, ed. Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995.
III. General Background Sources
Aaron, Daniel. Writers on the Left. New York: Avon, 1965.
Abramson, Doris E. Negro Playwrights in the American Theatre, 1925-1959.
New York: Columbia UP, 1969.
Allport, Gordon. The Nature of Prejudice. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958.
Appadora, A. The Bandung Conference. New Delhi: The Indian Council of World
Affairs, 1955.
Apter, David E. Ghana in Trans
Native Son, Black Boy, 12 Million Black Voices, The Long Dream, Uncle Tom's Children,
Black Power, The Outsider, and White Man Listen!
Questions and Activities for Students
1.Wright subtitled 12 Million Black Voices, "A Folk History of the Negro in the United
States." What is a folk history? What are the implications for how we came to understand history if
Wright's book is considered a valid example?
2. In what way might Wright's Black Power, which does not pretend to be
history, challenge and supplement official histories of the Gold Coast (Ghana)?
3.Discuss what uses a historian might make of RICHARD WRIGHT: BLACK
BOY. Compile a short bibliography of reference works that would help a historian
probe more deeply into the events that can only be sketched in the documentary.
4.Write a brief research report on American Communism from 1920 to 1945. How
was the growth of the Communist Party in the United States made easier by the
mood of the country during the Great Depression years? How active were Communists in the labor
movement or in efforts to achieve racial justice?
5.Read The Long Dream and examine to what extent it could be used for understanding southern
history just prior to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. What caution must be observed in
using fiction to understand history? Debate the validity of using fiction by such southern writers as
William Faulkner, Ellen Douglas, Eudora Welty, and Shelby Foote to gain new perspectives on history.
EDUCATION
Richard Wright's works that may be used in educational studies: Native
Son, 12 Million Black Voices, BLACK BOY, The Long Dream,
Rite of Passage, The Outsider, Black Power, Pagan Spain, The
Color Curtain, and White Man, Listen!
Questions and Activities for Students
1.Discuss the result of the lack of educational opportunities for black Southerners as these are
reflected in Uncle Tom's Children and in Wright's autobiography BLACK BOY. Do
these results still influence in some way African-American attitudes about public education
in the South? Explain.
2.In 12 Million Black Voices (1941), Wright noted that even if black schools "were
open for the full term our children would not have the time to go." To what peculiar feature
of black education in the rural South of the early twentieth century was Wright referring?
What forces led to the eradication of this peculiar feature?
3. Read Wright's essay "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow" in Uncle Tom's Children.
Discuss how the nature of Wright's education and social norms might illustrate the tension
that still exists between the ideals of classroom education and what students actually learn in
the world beyond the school.
4.How does Wright describe political education in Pagan Spain?
5. Examine Wright's depiction of adolescents and anti-social behavior in Rite of Passage.
Does this book provide a frame of reference for a discussion of the reasons for high
dropout rates in many contemporary school systems?
6.Use Black Power and The Color Curtain as focal points for a forum on education in
former colonies in Africa. Involve African students and students from so-called Third World countries
who are attending schools in the United States. Have we freed ourselves from the biases implicit in
Wright's commentaries?
7.Consider that Black Power, Pagan Spain, White Man, Listen!, and The Color Curtain were
not received favorably by critics or the reading public. If hostile reviews were based on the claim that
Wright lacked the insights and authority to make pronouncements about foreign cultures, what kinds of
special training might be most helpful for those who might eventually teach in foreign countries? Can
Wright's books help us to identify danger points in the assumptions upon which American or Western
education rest?
POLITICAL SCIENCE/CULTURAL STUDIES
For the purpose of cultural studies, all of Wright's works are relevant. For studies in political science, special
attention should be given to Native Son, The Outsider, Uncle Tom's Children, Eight Men, and Rite
of Passage.
Political Science Cultural Questions and Activities for Students
1. Why did Communism ultimately fail as an alternative political movement in this country?
2.Discuss what political conditions in the United States made Communism attractive
to Richard Wright and a number of other black intellectuals. Why did Wright leave
the Communist Party?
3.After viewing the documentary, examine the term "ideology." How did the
program represent the ideological dimensions of Wright's life and work? What
distinction should be drawn between ideology and core political values (criteria by
which people make political decisions and evaluation)?
4.What features of political economy in urban areas did Wright seem to be most concerned about in his
work?
5.What does the documentary urge us to consider about the importance of race and class in the study of
international politics? How did Wright's sense of himself as a man of the West compromise his authority
to speak for non-Western people?
6. Wright attracted unusual attention from government agencies in the United States, Great Britain, and
France. Consider the nature of politics during the Cold War. Why might Wright's work have been seen
as politically threatening?
7. Discuss to what degree the whole of Wright's works constitutes a model for an individual's study of
culture and change.
PSYCHOLOGY
Richard Wright's works that may be used in the study of psychology:
Native Son, BLACK BOY, Rite of Passage, Lawd Today!, The Outsider, The Long Dream,
Uncle Tom's Children, Eight Men, Savage Holiday, Black Power, and The Color Curtain.
Questions and Activities for Students
1. What do Wright's writings reveal about his understanding of African-American psychology?
2.Discuss the terms "paranoia" and "paranoid." Do you think Wright could have suffered from delusions
of persecution? Why or why not?
3. Was Wright depressed? What symptoms of depression, if any, did Wright exhibit in his writings?
4.One portion of Wright's original BLACK BOY manuscript was published as the
essay, "I Tried to be a Communist" in The God That Failed (New York: Harper,
1950). Discuss how Wright weighs his alienation from Communism with his basic
faith in the principles of Marxism. Explore the special topics of Wright's alienation
from organized religion in BLACK BOY and from certain aspects of West African
culture in Black Power.
5. Discuss Wright's depiction of adolescent psychology in Rite of Passage. How does it
differ from his depiction of the same in Native Son and The Long Dream? How do you
account for the differences?
6. Discuss the nature of prejudice and how prejudice was and continues to be an exceptionally powerful
force in American life. What does the documentary enable you to discern about Wright's responses to
prejudice?
7.Do you think Wright blamed others for his problems? Do you think it is psychologically healthy to place
blame on others? What is the healthy way to handle problems, feelings, and fears both real and
imagined? Could Wright have handled his problems in another manner?
8.Define the psychological term "projection." Do you think Wright projected his own feelings on to
others? Is projection a defense mechanism? Of what was Wright afraid?
9. Debate whether the traumas Wright reports that he suffered during his childhood and youth are
responsible for his essentially negative portrayals of women in his fiction.
10. Many artists, writers, musicians, poets, actors, etc., have dealt with personal pain through their artistic
endeavors. Discuss the negative and positive aspects of going through pain in this manner. Discuss what
human needs are met by using this manner of dealing with problems. Did Wright deal with his personal
pain through his writings? What personal needs did this satisfy for him?
SOCIOLOGY
Works that are relevant in discussions of the sociology of the South, race, and culture:
Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (1945) by St. Clair Drake and Horace
R. Cayton, Native Son, BLACK BOY, The Outsider, Lawd Today!, Rite of Passage, Uncle
Tom's Children, 12 Million Black Voices, and The Long Dream
Questions and Activities for Students
1.What type of society was present in Paris for young black artists and writers that was not present in the
United States during the same time? Has this changed?
2.What reasons can you give for the Communist political party encouraging Richard Wright's
efforts and offering to teach him how to write?
3. What description of gangs does Wright provide in Native Son and Rite of Passage? Do you
discern any subtle distinctions in his portrayal? Is the concept of a gang radically different fifty years
later?
4. Review several sociological studies of Chicago prior to 1950. How do they describe what might be
understood as the parallel yet connected societies inhabited by blacks and whites in an urban
environment? What insights about this phenomenon can be gained from reading Wright's introduction to
Black Metropolis?
5.Write a critique of the lawyer's defense of Bigger Thomas in Native Son. What are the weaknesses of
trying to make a case on the grounds of criminal causation? How are the specifics of sociological
investigations transformed by the language used in the courtroom or by the lawyer's rhetorical
strategies?
6. Discuss the caution that should be used in reading fiction that incorporates sociological information.
7. How does Wright treat the subject of accommodation in BLACK BOY and The Long Dream? To
what degree of cooperation and domination does he draw attention?
8. How did role expectation and role conflict seem to function in Wright's life? How are they reflected in
his autobiographical writings and in his fiction?
9. Is the frequently used term "ghetto" both an accurate and adequate description of urban black
communities in various regions of the United States?
10. Describe the social class to which Wright belonged at various periods in his life. What does the
documentary illustrate about social mobility? How was Wright's life effected?
11. Examine The Long Dream for its portrayal of Southern black middle class life. Does Wright use
stereotypes or is his treatment consistent with sociological descriptions prior to 1960?
12. Do you think the Communist Party wanted to control Wright's writings? Did they want him to leave the
Party? Did Wright think that the Communist Party should fight more for the plight of the Negro race?
Discuss your ideas.
13.What happened to Wright's finances after he moved to Paris? Discuss how being black and poor or
white and poor in the United States would be different in Paris.
OVERVIEW
Richard Nathaniel Wright, the son of an illiterate sharecropper father and a school teacher mother, was born on
September 4, 1908, on a Mississippi plantation some twenty miles from Natchez, in the community of Roxie.
His parentage is emblematic: his father may be seen as the soil, the concrete in life; his mother as the world of
ideas, the abstractions that shape our sense of reality. The trajectory of Wright's life from his birth in Mississippi
to his death in Paris on November 28, l960, at 52 years of age, marks a long and unfinished quest for the
liberation of the mind and the human spirit.
What seems to have driven Wright's quest might be described as the multiple dimensions of hunger. During his
boyhood, Wright's hunger was often physical due to his father's desertion of the family when Wright was only
seven years old. In fact, the absence of food and of his father became interchangeable in the boy's mind. When,
as a man of thirty-seven, Wright reflected on his black childhood and youth in the Deep South, he exposed his
pain in words that are haunting: "As the days slid past the image of my father became
associated with my pangs of hunger, and whenever I felt hunger I thought of him with
a deep biological bitterness." The bitterness, however, is not only directed against his
biological father but also against a whole society that provided grounds for hunger. The
painful knowledge that in the South of the early twentieth century, the ceiling of a
brilliant BLACK BOY's possibilities was indeed low, thus creating a vast need for
fulfillment in Wright's young life. Wright's hunger to develop as a whole human being
was social, psychological, and spiritual. This hunger to be, to know, and to understand was pervasive,
formative, and motivating throughout his lifetime.
Wright's hunger could not be satisfied by the success of Uncle Tom's Children (1938), the fame that came
with the publication of Native Son (1940), or BLACK BOY (1945). These books made Wright a
spokesperson for an entire generation of Black Americans.
Wright could write passionately and eloquently about the meaning of suffering in the lives of
oppressed and exploited people because that suffering was an integral part of his own life. Wright's material
success only seemed to intensify his awareness that hunger of the spirit is implacable. The Communist Party had
been the only one to take a deep interest in Richard Wright's life and had at one time offered to teach him to
write.
As one views RICHARD WRIGHT: BLACK BOY, one should be very attentive to what is revealed about
Wright's sustained interest in language and in the affairs of the world. Wright was an especially keen observer
and recorder of the human condition in the twentieth century, and his mode of engaging issues and ideas was that
of the participant-observer.
In the books that followed BLACK BOY, Wright expresses his deep interest in the large questions of authority,
power, and freedom. Like Cross Damon, the hero of The Outsider (1953), Wright himself had existential
longings. If one understands this novel as one segment of Wright's intellectual autobiography, it is easier to
understand why and how he situated himself in non-fiction works and why he was so
fascinated by modern psychology in Lawd Today, Savage Holiday, and The Long
Dream. Whether Wright was analyzing the independence movement and African culture in
Black Power (1954), reporting on a conference at which Asian and African nations
debated what should be their future in the global order in The Color Curtain (1956), or
examining the political and religious intricacies of Catholic culture in Pagan Spain (1957),
Wright was always the engaged writer, the brother in suffering. It is the ethos of Wright's
voice, his ability to be both victim and asserter, that insures his authority and is the most
enduring quality of his literary legacy.
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