Books by Richard Wright

 Richard Wright: Early Works  / Black Boy  / Native Son  / Uncle Tom's Children / 12 Million Black Voices  / Richard Wright: Later Works

The Outsider  /  Pagan Spain /  Black Power  /  White Man Listen!  / The Color Curtain /  Savage Holiday / The Long Dream

Eight Men: Short Stories  / Haiku / American Hunger /  Lawd Today!

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The Homestretch to the Richard Wright Centennial

By Julia Wright

My mother, Ellen Poplar married Richard Wright on March 12 1941 and died on April 6 2004, aged 92. Forty four years after Richard. They are both buried in the French exile they chose, in Paris. Ellen was the Executrix of the Richard Wright Estate for long decades before her death, and was as well a literary agent in her own right. (Her "stable" included Simone de Beauvoir, Eldridge Cleaver, Violette Leduc, etc.)

In the late seventies, I returned to Paris from my freelance journalism work in Africa to help my aging mother to shoulder the dialogue of Richard Wright's paper sons and daughters with the world. As from 2004, I have been representing the Estate in her place, helped through my mourning by the thought of a birth, a century ago in 1908, in Natchez. And how to commemorate that birth internationally.

My personal gift to my father on his Birthday was to convince HarperCollins to publish his last unpublished draft, uncorrected and unsubmitted. Death literally prevented him from giving it the ending he would have wanted for it. It is called A Father's Law and will be published by HarperCollins on January 8th with a short introduction by me, describing how I found it and related to the conflict between the generations it depicts.

My second gift was to Richard Wright’s readership, deprived for so long from his political non fiction written in exile at the height of the Cold War. These books, essentially a trilogy, Black Power, White Man, Listen!, The Color Curtain, had been allowed to fall out of print for reasons of “poor sales” - some claimed; for reasons of “black listing” – others claimed. Wherever the truth lies, it was my wish to give these later writings back to the public and again HarperCollins worked in agreement by issuing an omnibus  containing all three works, due to hit the bookshops in February 2008.

Meanwhile, the idea of a preliminary series of Pre-Centennial Lectures and gatherings to plan Richard Wright events was born. The idea was to give autobiographical talks based on my own work in progress wherever interest in Richard Wright was strong and leave my hosts free to brainstorm and plan their own creative tributes to Richard Wright—from Centennial Committees to Festivals to art and the creation of landmarks and encouragement of his ideas, from literacy to the unrelenting struggle against racism.

During 2006, I followed the trail of Pre-Centennial interest in him from Seattle to the University of Columbia, Missouri. Professor Julius Thompson, my first Pre-Centennial lecture host, passed away barely a week ago. May he rest in peace. In New Orleans, I spoke on the uncanny resemblance with Katrina, of the floods portrayed in "Uncle Tom's Children" and "Eight Men"—only to speak the following week in arid Arizona on campus but also in the community. I spoke at the University of Massachusetts and a few days ago at the University of Temple and at the University of Pennsylvania, the guest of Professor Joyce Ann Joyce, one of the first outstanding Richard Wright scholars. It was during a summer of many speeches that we learned that Michel Fabre, the author of The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright had also passed. My condolences to Geneviève.

Each time I left to go home to exile, Paris, and to my memoir. Meanwhile, Professor Jerry Ward was sparking off Richard Wright Reading Circles which became a household word throughout the South. And feisty, driven women like Professor Maryemma Graham and Dr. Colia Clark traced a network of revival throughout the land.

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And so 2008 looms with from February 20 to 24 in Natchez, The Natchez Literary and Film Festival totally dedicated to Richard Wright, (contact Carolyn Vance Smith : carolyn.smith@colin.edu).

March 28-March 30 : I will be speaking on the theme of “Transmission and Resistance” at the Conference of Black Writers at Medgar Evers College, (contact: bgreene@mec.cuny.edu). 

March 29 (4:30 p.m.) takes us to the Schomburg Center in Harlem where we will be hosted by the Organization of American Historians, Howard Dodson and Professor Maryemma Graham on a panel of historians discussing : “Richard Wright at 100 : looking backward and forward” (contact Maryemma Graham :  marygraham@ku.edu).

April 13th 2008 : Richard Wright day at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (contact : acoble@email.unc.edu). This will be a daylong commemoration where I share the keynote with my longstanding friend, Professor Jerry Ward.

April 20th to 27th is Richard Wright Week in Philadelphia (contact Dr. Colia Clark :  coliaclark@aol.com or Larry Robin : larry@robinsbookstore.com).

June 19 and 20: American University of Paris, an international seminar on Richard Wright (contact William Dow : william.dow@wanadoo.fr or Alice Craven :  acraven@aup.fr).

June 28th : a seminar on Richard Wright in Hiroshima, Japan, sponsored by the Japanese Black Studies Association (contact Toru Kiuchi : tkiuchi@sta.att.ne.jp).

September 4 to 12 2008 : Jackson Mississippi Richard Wright week at various venues (confirmation with coliaclark@aol.com).

October 1st 2008 : I will be giving the first Du Bois Institute lecture in Harvard (Contact Dell Hamilton: dhamilt@fas.harvard.edu)

These are but a few early examples of venues, with others being planned in Jackson and Memphis, spilling over into 2010. 2010 being the commemoration of my father's premature death in 1960.

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Here are websites and email connections will keep all those who seek more details regularly updated :

1. http://www.harpercollins.com 

2. http://www.colin.edu/nlcc

Contains the full schedule for 2008 NLCC “Richard Wright, the South, and The World,” February 21-24, 2008, and the link [Reading Richard Wright opens on Jerry Ward’s year-long discussion project in Natchez.

3.  http://www2.ku.edu/~phbw

Official website for the Project on the History of Black Writing at the University of Kansas.

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For Richard Wright at 100 events, nationally and internationally. Email connections are

Jerry Ward jerryward31@hotmail.com / Maryemma Graham marygraham@ku.edu / Dr. Colia Clark coliaclark@aol.com

Everybody has internalized his or her Richard Wright. That is how it should be. If, as his elder daughter, I had a personal emphasis to put I would say that though the elites of Academia have claimed him and indeed deconstructed and post-deconstructed him, he belongs in the end to the community. Bigger was electrocuted by the State, x-rayed by showpiece Academia, given care and attention where academics can  be most generous - and yet, elusive still,  he is alive and kicking out there seeking answers to questions that are being asked manifold. 

Paris Dec 18th 2007

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Dr. Jerry Ward Lectures on Richard Wright

Dillard professor celebrates Richard Wright Centennial with lecture series

(January 4, 2008) - Jerry W. Ward, Jr., distinguished scholar and professor of English and African World Studies at Dillard University, is conducting a series of lectures throughout the 2008 academic year to celebrate the life and literary work of author Richard Wright (Native Son, Black Boy, et al).

The series will feature with a three-day event—The Richard Wright Centennial Lectures 2008 - to be held March 11-13, 2008 at Dillard University. The events at Dillard are free and open to the public. Dr. Ward will also be featured at the Richard Wright Centennial Conference, June 19-21, 2008, in Paris, France. Wright spent a number of years as an expatriate writer in Paris.

Dr. Ward is the group leader for the pre-Centennial series of discussions on Wright and his work that are held once a month at various locations around Natchez, Mississippi, Wright's birthplace. The theme of the discussions is “Reading Richard Wright on the Eve of His 100th Birthday.” The Natchez events are sponsored by the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Natchez Association for the Preservation of African-American Culture, and the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration.

Dr. Ward will be a featured speaker at the Natchez Annual Literary and Cinema Celebration, to be held February 21-24, 2008, at the Natchez Convention Center. The theme of the event will be “Richard Wright, The South, and The World.” Wright's daughter and grandchildren are expected to attend.

One of America's greatest African-American writers, Richard Wright was also among the first Black writers to achieve literary fame and fortune, but his reputation has less to do with the color of his skin than with the superb quality of his work. He was born and spent the first years of his life on a plantation not far from Natchez, Mississippi. His father, Nathaniel, was an illiterate sharecropper and his mother, Ella Wilson, was a well-educated school teacher. The family's extreme poverty forced them to move to Memphis when Richard was six years old. Although he spent only a few years of his life in Mississippi, those years would play a key role in his two of his most recognized works:
Native Son, a novel, and his autobiography, Black Boy.

Dr. Ward is currently co-editing the forthcoming Cambridge History of African-American Literature with Professor Maryemma Graham, University of Kansas. Dr. Ward is also a Richard Wright scholar, and has a central role in planning the Richard Wright Centennial 2008.

CONTACT: Karen Celestan / University Communications / (504) 816-4800 [office] / kcelestan@dillard.edu

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posted 4 December 2007