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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! /
A Father’s Law
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November 28, 2010
and Richard
Wright
By Jerry W. Ward,
Jr.
Dillard University
November 28, 2010 marks the
fiftieth anniversary of Richard Wright’s death, bringing
to closure the celebration of his centennial. November
28, 2010 marks the birth, for those who demand reason
and critical thought in a time of crisis, of principled
readings and rereadings of Wright’s published works.
They read in anticipation that some of his unpublished
works will be printed in the coming years. Truly,
Wright’s works are equipment for living in the chaotic
twenty-first century as much as they were in the
troubled twentieth century. The moment of birth and
rebirth involves reconfiguring how the voice of a genius
from Mississippi continues to bid the world to listen!
But it is not easy to listen to
Wright in 2010, especially for people who cling to hope
as they desperately seek to confirm the goodness of
mankind. They do not hear the soothing platitudes they
need for comfort. Skeptics and cynics, however
wrongheaded they might be, stand a better chance of
hearing Wright’s demands for a truth, for making justice
more palpable, and for the purging of guilt. Yet, it is
inevitable that all must listen to Wright, or at least
overhear what he is saying, because his spirit haunts
the world in a quest for peace.
Fifty years ago, Hoyt W. Fuller was
able to find a small measure of peace and to mitigate
his grief by remembering Wright “has spoken with
eloquence and with all the power of his great
overburdened heart that which he felt so deeply”
(550-51).1
Fuller concluded his meditation on Richard Wright with a
modicum of hope: “Richard Wright was an American,
tugging at the conscience and the submerged sense of
reason of America, and American should be proud to have
produced him. Perhaps someday a more mature America
will embrace her rejected native son. Perhaps that time
will come” (555). Unlike Fuller, we are suspicious of
America’s conscience and sense of reason, beholding them
as quite remote possibilities. We have greater anxiety
about America’s capacity to remember.
Thus, the word perhaps opens
cautionary dimensions. Perhaps those for whom Wright is
more a living presence than a canonized writer, those
who will to learn from Wright’s works the dignity of
critical reflection and the great suffering that
integrity demands—well, perhaps they will succeed in
persuading others of the unending importance of Wright’s
visions, questions, and ideas. Perhaps they will fail.
We can take consolation in the fact that they shall not
fail and succeed simultaneously in a future of
unarticulated designs. Perhaps the sheer force of
uncertainty is our best assurance that the most
essential qualities of Wright’s intelligence and
foresight will not just vanish in the twenty-first
century. Even from another world, Mississippi’s native
son has audible authority in the world we inhabit.
1
Fuller’s “On the Death of Richard Wright" was originally published in
the August 1961 issue of Southwest Review. It was reprinted in
Black Southern Voices.
Ed. John Oliver Killens and
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. New York:
Merid1an, 1992. Page numbers refer to the reprinting.
Dr.
Jerry Ward is a distinguished professor of English and
African American World Studies at Dillard University, New
Orleans, LA. Ward spent 20 years as the Lawrence Durgin
Professor of Literature at Tougaloo College in Jackson. He is
recognized as one of the leading experts on Wright.
His credentials concerning Wright include, co-editor
of
The Richard Wright Encyclopedia (2008), to be published in 2006 by Greenwood
Press; founding member of the Richard Wright Circle, and his
recent portrayal of Richard Wright in the Mississippi Humanities
Council's Mississippi Chautauqua Writers series.
The Katrina Papers, by Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
$18.95 /
The Richard Wright Encyclopedia (2008)
Richard Wright Papers
Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library
New Haven, Connecticut /
April 1994
An American Goes Back to Africa: Richard Wright’s
Journey of Discovery
(Lewis)
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The Most Native of Sons: A Biography of
Richard Wright (1970)
By
John A. Williams
America's
disregard of Richard as an artist and a man,
plus his own interest in examining the
mechanics of the oppression of black people,
may have led him into his next venture—a
trip to Africa. For it all began in Africa;
the slave trade and slavery; lost roots,
forgotten heritages. Where better to
continue the study of what was happening to
Negroes than in Africa?
The idea was first suggested by Mrs.
George Padmore, who was a guest of the
Wrights. Her husband had remained behind in
London to work with Kwame Nkrumah, who was
going to ask for self-government for the
Gold Coast (later Ghana) that summer. In
fact, Mrs. Padmore's suggestion was
specific: go to the Gold Coast.
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The postwar years had seen a ferment for freedom around
the world in the colonies of Britain, France, The
Netherlands, and Belgium. "What about the Four
Freedoms?" the people in the colonies wanted to know.
Keeping pace with the cresting desire for independence,
the Fifth Pan-African Congress had been held in
Manchester, England, only the year before.
Wright's Ghana in the 1950s
Wright's biographer
John A. Williams wrote in
The Most Native of Sons, a Biography of
Richard Wright: "The life of a small black
boy in a small country town in the Deep South could
be very peaceful, as it sometimes was for Richard.
Under the bright, hot summer sun, he fished with his
father and his brother, walked slowly along the
dusty roads, or played in the fields. Though the
wounds of segregation in the Deep South and
throughout the country always followed him, Wright
said, 'I know America. I know what a great nation
and people America could be but won't be until there
is only one American, regardless of his color or his
religion or anything else'."
Southern Literary Trail
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Native Son (1951) (B&W Ep) [VHS] (1949)
Richard Wright (Actor), Gloria Madison
(Actor), Pierre Chenal
When originally released in Europe as
Sangre Negra in 1950,
Native Son—the film—was a long time
coming for Wright. The author had fought for
the integrity of his original novel enough
to take up playing Bigger Thomas himself.
When released for American audiences as much
as 30 minutes of film was left on the
editing room floor. It would be interesting
to know what was left out, but one can make
an educated guess.
For those of you who have read the
novel this may not seem odd, but the main
parts left out of the film have to do with
miscegenation (Bigger kissing Ms Dalton) and
Communism (the word isn't even mentioned!!).
What is left is a dry husk of novel, but it
leaves one to wonder what American audiences
(or rather the censors) were ready to show
in American theatres.
Several liberties were taken by the
director (and Wright?) that may also prove
interesting for further conversation.
Bessie, Bigger's one-dimensional love
interest, is killed in the movie also, but
it comes to the reader/viewer in the form of
a flashback in the prison scene (Fate).
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Also, there is an interesting dream
sequence where Bessie comes to Bigger like a Judas
figure and Bigger runs through the cotton fields of his
dream to his waiting father. . .
It's refreshing to see his father appear in the dream
sequence considering that it's NOT in the book and
Wright's father had left him at an early age.
Wright may have been an excellent
though 'confused' writer, but he is NO actor!! I just
imagined Bigger to be a little more thuggish than Wright
could pull-off. But he should get an E for Effort:
Losing 50 pounds to play the role, fighting to get the
film made in Europe since he had Communism affiliations
during the Macarthy trials, and just being an all around
'Daemonic Genius.' I'd recommend the film for its
extra-literary qualities. If your teaching the novel,
give your self a 90-minute break!!
But the Book is Better than the Film!!!
T.A. Stewart
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Why does Pres. Obama
denounce the Burma unfair election process but not Haiti
upcoming unfair elections?—By Dan Beeton—Haiti is scheduled
to hold elections on Nov. 28, and nothing —neither the cholera
outbreak that has killed more than 1,000 people nor the fact
that more than 1 million earthquake survivors remain
homeless—seems likely to convince the Haitian government or its
international backers that the vote should be postponed. It
should be. Why? The electoral process is rigged.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems happy to
go along with the charade. . . .In Haiti, as in Burma, several
parties, including the most popular, Fanmi Lavalas, are being kept off
the ballot in an overtly anti-democratic move. Fanmi Lavalas has won
every election it has participated in, and authorities seem determined
to prevent that from happening again. In Haiti, as in Burma, a council
handpicked and controlled by the government is overseeing the electoral
process. And in Haiti, as in Burma, the popular party's leader is kept
from rallying supporters.—LaTimes
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Toussaint Table |
posted 21 November 2010
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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