Life, Writings & Politics of Richard Wright

Wright was born in 1908 in Natchez, Mississippi, raised in Memphis, which he left for Chicago at the age of 19, and died in 1960. He was almost entirely self-educated. He held numerous menial jobs in Memphis and Chicago, and was forced onto relief during the Depression. His writing for the Federal Writers' Project won him a prize, for his story collection Uncle Tom's Children in 1938. After the 1940 publication of Native Son, Wright

was considered not only the leading black author of the U.S. but also a major heir of the naturalistic tradition in his story of the tragedy of a black boy reared in the Chicago slums (Hart, 1983, p. 850).

In 1945, he wrote the autobiography of his youth, Black Boy, migrated to the more liberal and tolerant atmosphere of Paris after World War II, and wrote several more books, some of which were published after his death in 1960, including American Hunger (the sequel to Black Boy), published in 1977.

Along with his autobiography Black Boy, Wright's novel Native Son was one of his most famous and powerful works. The novel effect

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in a daze and take me home and beat me; but the next morning, no sooner had she gone to her job than I would run to the saloon and wait for someone to take me and buy me a drink (Wright, 1998, p. 21). But this stage is brief, for Wright soon leaves behind the self-shaming actions of the bar and alcohol, and determines not to be beaten down by life or even by another individual, black or white. After a black boy is beaten in a fight by a white boy, young Wright says, "I'm not going to let anybody beat me" (Wright, 1998, p. 24). This stance grew in Wright from the proud proclamation of a young boy to the artistic and political determination of a respected artist and activist. One can fairly surmise that in part his later longing for unity among workers under communism, and even unity among blacks and whites at least in terms of mutually humane treatment, is rooted in the lack of such a sense of togetherness in his early family life. His father abuses and abandons the family, his mother falls ill and destitute, and Wright and his brother are forced to live in an orphan home. These events illustrate the suffering which shaped the author's life and character. Also, they lead any sensitive reader to feel deep sympathy for Wright, w
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Approximate Word count = 2784
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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