The Cambridge Companion to Richard Wright

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as his lesser-known work in journalism and poetry, paying particular attention to manuscripts in Wright's archive - unpublished letters and novels, plans for multivolume works - that allow us to see the depth and expansiveness of his aesthetic and political vision.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.

Author: Glenda R. Carpio
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 03/21/2019
Pages: 264
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.90h x 8.50w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781108475174

Review Citation(s):
Choice 10/01/2019

About the Author
Carpio, Glenda R.: - Glenda R. Carpio is Professor of African and African American Studies and English at Harvard University, Massachusetts. She is the author of Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery (2008). She coedited African American Literary Studies: New Texts, New Approaches, New Challenges (2011) with Professor Werner Sollors and is currently at work on a book tentatively titled Migrant Aesthetics, a study of contemporary immigrant fiction.