The Cambridge Companion to Richard Wright

Shows Wright's art was intrinsic to his politics, grounding his exploration of the intersections between race, gender, and class.

Glenda R. Carpio (Edited by)

9781108475174, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 March 2019

264 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.9 cm, 0.51 kg

'This is a welcome addition to the scholarship on Wright (1908–60), especially in that it attempts to revise Wright's literary legacy … All the essays are thoughtful and well researched. Two of the more outstanding submissions are Kathryn Roberts's 'Outside Joke: Humorlessness and Masculinity in Richard Wright' and Ernest Julius Mitchell's 'Tenderness in Early Richard Wright'. These essays reframe Wright's intentions and explode long-held myths of his views on gender and sexuality … Highly Recommended' A. S. Newson-Horst, Choice

Hailed as 'the father of black literature in the twentieth century', Richard Wright was an iconoclast, an intellectual of towering stature, whose multidisciplinary erudition rivals only that of W. E. B. Du Bois. This collection captures Wright's immense power, which has made him a beacon for writers across decades, from the civil rights era to today. Individual essays examine Wright's art as central to his intellectual life and shed new light on his classic texts - Native Son and Black Boy. Other essays turn to his short fiction, and non-fiction as well as his lesser-known work in journalism and poetry, paying particular attention to manuscripts in Wright's archive - unpublished letters and novels, plans for multivolume works - that allow us to see the depth and expansiveness of his aesthetic and political vision. Exploring how Wright's expatriation to France facilitated a broadening of this vision, contributors challenge the idea that expatriation led to Wright's artistic decline.

Introduction: Richard Wright's art and politics Glenda R. Carpio
Part I. Native Son in Jim Crow America: 1. The literary ecology of Native Son and Black Boy George Hutchinson
2. Richard Wright's planned incongruity: Black Boy as modern living Jay Garcia
3. Marxism, communism, and Richard Wright's depression-era work Nathaniel F. Mills
4. Rhythms of race in Richard Wright's 'Big Boy Leaves Home' Robert B. Stepto
5. Sincere art and honest science: Richard Wright and the Chicago School of Sociology Gene Andrew Jarrett
6. Outside joke: humorlessness and masculinity in Richard Wright Kathryn S. Roberts
Part II. I Choose Exile: Wright Abroad: 7. Freedom in a godless and unhappy world: Wright as outsider Tommie Shelby
8. Richard Wright, Paris Noir, and transatlantic networks: a book history perspective Laurence Cossu-Beaumont
9. Expatriation in Wright's late fiction Alice Mikal Craven
10. Richard Wright's globalism Nicholas T. Rinehart
11. Richard Wright's transnationalism and his unwritten Magnus Opus Stephan Kuhl
12. Tenderness in early Richard Wright Ernest Julius Mitchell.

Subject Areas: Literary companions, book reviews & guides [DSRC], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literature: history & criticism [DS]