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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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Books by Jerry W. Ward Jr.
Trouble the Water
(1997) /
Black Southern Voices (1992) /
The Richard Wright Encyclopedia (2008) /
The Katrina Papers
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One Writer' Legacy: Richard Wright
and Our 21st Century
By Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
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The people that walked in darkness have
seen a great light; they that dwell in the
land of the shadow of death, upon them hath
the light shined. Isaiah 8.2 |
Our twenty-first century is comparable to living in the
land of the shadow of death and terrorism; no great
light is granted unto us; we have to seek such light as
is available. Richard Wright’s legacy, the published and
unpublished body of his writing, is one path upon which
one might journey in question enlightenment. Rejecting
what the world of our new century would have us believe
is reality, we have the option of reading Wright’s
legacy with deep and hyper attention and discovering the
light that actuality may provide. Such might be the
prophylaxis to protect ourselves against disinformation
and misinformation.
Reading the legacy with deep and hyper attention1
is, on one hand, an act of practiced history, of willing
to engage Wright’s writings much in the way R. G.
Collingwood recommended his fellow historians should
engage their subjects by inhabiting the minds of the
subjects. Whether such an act is felicitous in
discovering actuality is not the issue. The issue is
Wright’s commitment to understanding his world within a
lifetime from 1908 to 1960. Insofar as we might inhabit
his mind, we recognize that Wright himself invoked
histories to situate his perspectives.
His perspectives are obviously
always the past for his current readers (and those of
some anticipated future), and those perspectives may
seem to be imprisoned by the discursive limits of the
twentieth century. This would be especially true
regarding his ideas and perspectives on international
politics. These limits must be acknowledged. They need
not retard efforts to grasp the surgical consciousness
Wright developed, in part, through his reading and
incorporation of the past in his poetry, short fiction,
novels , drama, and non-fiction.
Reading the legacy with deep and hyper attention is, on
the other hand, an act that results in an eruption of
problems. Due respect must be accorded those who
question the contemporary relevance of Wright’s works.
They are usually questioning the reliability of history
as narrative rather than the validity of history as a
process of thinking. I argue, however, the relevance of
Wright’s works (like the relevance of any dead writer’s
words) is socially constructed in our notice of fragile
referentiality and in our self-conscious readings. Our
close readings and hyper-dominated readings of his works
are complicated by our ideological baggage. That baggage
does seem to influence our use of literacy as we analyze
and seek to find rational explanatory patterns in our
contemporary world. It governs our ability to observe,
judge, and reach tentative conclusions. It is Wright
that we learn to frame critical questions.
If aesthetic distance is displaced by aesthetic
intimacy, we begin to think with Wright. We begin to
sense how his flexible Marxism and fidelity to Western
assumptions strengthen belief that the past enlightens
the present with Faulknerian viciousness. We begin to
discern how much our self-interest is entwined with some
of his major themes: the permanence of rabid racisms;
capitalism’s dependency on enforcing racial inequity;
the permanence of imperial, colonial, and neo-colonial
enterprises; the non-essential nature of human identity;
the immanence of terrorism and global conflicts.
All of Wright’s works are in greater and lesser degrees
superb instances of aesthetic and political critical,
crucial thinking. They are rooted in the proletarian
imagination and modes of cognition. Janet Galligani
Casey has recently observed that Olive Tilford Dargan’s
novel Call Home the Heart (1932) “suggests that
the relation between the ‘aesthetic’ and the ‘political’
is manifested by a constant if often implicit tension
rather than a mutual exclusivity” (245).
Implicit tension is explicit in
Richard Wright’ thought. It is indeed enlightening to
read Wright’s early proletarian poetry,the stories in
Uncle Tom's Children
(1938 and 1940), the novels
Native Son (1940) and
Lawd Today! (1963), the
novella Rite of Passage (1994) the play Native
Son (1941) the photo documentary
12 Million Black Voices (1941), and the autobiography
Black Boy
(1945 and 1991)—works Wright completed before becoming
an expatriate in Paris in 1947. Wright discovered
existentialism in Mississippi not in France. He rather
thoroughly raised questions about racism, capitalisms,
the formation of personality and identity and terrorism
and counter-terrorism American style.
He understood manifestations of
racism in the New World since the fifteenth century. He
understood what the sociologist Howard Winant tells us
in The World Is A Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since
World War II:
Race has been fundamental in global politics and culture
for half a millennium. It continues to signify and
structures social life not only experientially and
locally, but nationally and globally. Race is present everywhere; it is
evident in the distribution of resources and power
and in the desires and fears of individuals from
Alberta to Zimbabwe. (1)
Wright understood racism and terrorism do have
researchable histories. Their various manifestations may
operate either in concert or in a singular fashion at
any given time. The formation of many modern nation
states through the world is anchored in combinations of
political and economic terrorism.The contemporary scene
is brutally, inhumanely illustrated in the Middle East
and on the continent of Africa. Above all, Wright
recognized and interrogated the transmogrifying force of
such tragedies on the human personality. The recognition
quickened his interests in sociology, anthropology,
psychology, and the origins of criminality.
The works Wright created before his
death in 1960—the novels
The Outsider (1953),
Savage Holiday (1954), and
The Long Dream
(1958) and A Father’s Law (2008); the short
stories in
Eight Men (1961), the travel books
Black Power (1954),
The Color Curtain (1956),
Pagan
Spain (1957); the 817 haiku in This
Other World:
Haiku (1998); the striking essays in
White Man Listen! (1957)—the relentless problems of
alienation, moral disengagement, the power of religion,
international policies, imperialism, and lack of remorse
for acts of murder.
Wright hinted in his later works that the histories and
emerging events of Eastern and Western imperialism and
fascism can be examined as surreal, irrational, and
effective immoral acts in the service of power. The
historicized hyper and deep attentive acts which can be
our survival mechanisms, our limited salvation, draw
forth the accusative and valid and necessary questions.
We become aware that such a film as Hotel Rwanda
allows us to see the constellation formed by
imperialism, genocide, and terrorism. We begin to see
sites of reciprocal responsibility for our global
tragedy in the reactions of the oppressed and the
oppressor.
A reader who wants to explore the
consequences of Wright’s instigations can now access the
Internet. She or he can follow the branching links of
cyberspace which eventually cast light on the
appropriateness of returning to the past and
experiencing the uncanny shock of Richard Wright’s
recognitions. He prompts us to be historical in
agonizing over our lives, our destinies. His legacy in
our 21st century fosters our more active “readings” of
actuality and contemporary existence. The legacy
constitutes its own warrants for our passionate
attention.
1 See N. Katherine
Hayles's 'Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational
Divide in Cognitive Modes' in Profession 2007.
Works Cited
Casey, Janet
Galligani. “Reviving the Thirties: The Case for Teaching
Proletarian Fiction in the Undergraduate American
Literature Classroom.” College English 70.3
(2008): 233-248.
Hayles, N. Katherine. “Hyper and Deep Attention: The
Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes.” Profession
2007. New York: Modern Language Association, 2007.
Winant, Howard. The World is a Ghetto: Race and
Democracy Since World War II. New York: Basic Books,
2001.
January 27, 2008
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The Homestretch to the Richard Wright
Centennial /
Dr. Jerry Ward Lectures on Richard Wright
In many ways,
his journal and the "new diary" finds its postmodern
manifestation in the blog, particularly one like
Ethelbert's. The journal/new diary/blog is an
extremely flexible genre that permits the inclusion
of various other forms: poetry, Q & As, course
syllabi, dialogs, prose pieces, doodlings, sketches,
dramatic scenes, etc. I was particularly fascinated
with Jerry's piece about his body, suggesting as it
does, separation and disconnection from the "life of
the mind" that he lives. Jerry is an intellectual
par excellence with little indication in the
Papers
of his physical/pleasurable self. Maybe he'll
expand later in the book on his trips to casinos and
enjoyment of Jack Daniels. But, then, the book is
not a reflection on joy, but, as you say, of power
and clarity in the midst of disaster and depression.
Most people would have disintegrated under such
trauma. More about this later as I get my thoughts
together. Miriam
The Richard Wright Encyclopedia (2008)
is a marvelous resource! It's not like any
encyclopedia I've seen before. Already, I have spent hours reading
through the various entries. So much is there: people, themes,
issues, events, bibliographies, etc., related to Wright. Yours is a
monumental contribution! The more I read Wright (and about him), the
more I am amazed at the depth and breadth of his work and its impact
on the worlds of literature, philosophy, politics, sociology,
history, psychology, etc. He was formidable!
Floyd W. Hayes
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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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A Wreath for Emmett Till
By Marilyn Nelson; Illustrated by
Philippe Lardy
This memorial to
the lynched teen is in the Homeric
tradition of poet-as-historian. It is a
heroic crown of sonnets in Petrarchan
rhyme scheme and, as such, is quite
formal not only in form but in language.
There are 15 poems in the cycle, the
last line of one being the first line of
the next, and each of the first lines
makes up the entirety of the 15th. This
chosen formality brings distance and
reflection to readers, but also calls
attention to the horrifically ugly
events. The language is highly
figurative in one sonnet, cruelly
graphic in the next. The illustrations
echo the representative nature of the
poetry, using images from nature and
taking advantage of the emotional
quality of color. There is an
introduction by the author, a page about
Emmett Till, and literary and poetical
footnotes to the sonnets. The artist
also gives detailed reasoning behind his
choices. This underpinning information
makes this a full experience, eminently
teachable from several aspects,
including historical and literary—School
Library Journal |
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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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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
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
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
posted 28 January 2008
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