Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition]

Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition] PDF Author: Richard Wright
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 006302859X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 534

Book Description
A special 75th anniversary edition of Richard Wright's powerful and unforgettable memoir, with a new foreword by John Edgar Wideman and an afterword by Malcolm Wright, the author’s grandson. When it exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, Black Boy was both praised and condemned. Orville Prescott of the New York Times wrote that “if enough such books are written, if enough millions of people read them maybe, someday, in the fullness of time, there will be a greater understanding and a more true democracy.” Yet from 1975 to 1978, Black Boy was banned in schools throughout the United States for “obscenity” and “instigating hatred between the races.” Wright’s once controversial, now celebrated autobiography measures the raw brutality of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Enduring poverty, hunger, fear, abuse, and hatred while growing up in the woods of Mississippi, Wright lied, stole, and raged at those around him—whites indifferent, pitying, or cruel and Blacks resentful of anyone trying to rise above their circumstances. Desperate for a different way of life, he headed north, eventually arriving in Chicago, where he forged a new path and began his career as a writer. At the end of Black Boy, Wright sits poised with pencil in hand, determined to “hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo.” Seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate. “To read Black Boy is to stare into the heart of darkness,” John Edgar Wideman writes in his foreword. “Not the dark heart Conrad searched for in Congo jungles but the beating heart I bear.” One of the great American memoirs, Wright’s account is a poignant record of struggle and endurance—a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time.

The Man Who Lived Underground

The Man Who Lived Underground PDF Author: Richard Wright
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062971468
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Book Description
New York Times Bestseller One of the Best Books of 2021 by Time magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe and Esquire, and one of Oprah’s 15 Favorite Books of the Year “The Man Who Lived Underground reminds us that any ‘greatest writers of the 20th century’ list that doesn’t start and end with Richard Wright is laughable. It might very well be Wright’s most brilliantly crafted, and ominously foretelling, book.” —Kiese Laymon A major literary event: an explosive, previously unpublished novel about race and violence in America by the legendary author of Native Son and Black Boy Fred Daniels, a Black man, is picked up by the police after a brutal double murder and tortured until he confesses to a crime he did not commit. After signing a confession, he escapes from custody and flees into the city’s sewer system. This is the devastating premise of this scorching novel, a never-before-seen masterpiece by Richard Wright. Written between his landmark books Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945), at the height of his creative powers, it would see publication in Wright's lifetime only in drastically condensed and truncated form, and ultimately be included in the posthumous short story collection Eight Men. Now, for the first time, by special arrangement with the author’s estate, the full text of the work that meant more to Wright than any other (“I have never written anything in my life that stemmed more from sheer inspiration”) is published in the form that he intended, complete with his companion essay, “Memories of My Grandmother.” Malcolm Wright, the author’s grandson, contributes an afterword.

Richard Wright

Richard Wright PDF Author: Hazel Rowley
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226730387
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 645

Book Description
Skillfully interweaving quotations from Wright's writings, Rowley portrays a man who transcended the times in which he lived and sought to reconcile opposing cultures in his work. In this lively, finely crafted narrative, Wright--passionate, complex, courageous, and flawed--comes vibrantly to life. Two 8-page photo inserts.

Richard Wright and the Library Card

Richard Wright and the Library Card PDF Author: William Miller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781880000885
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
As boy in the segregated South, author Richard Wright was determined to borrow books from the public library. His story illustrates the power of determination in turning a dream into reality. Full color.

Richard Wright in Context

Richard Wright in Context PDF Author: Michael Nowlin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108803296
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 652

Book Description
Richard Wright was one of the most influential and complex African American writers of the twentieth century. Best known as the trailblazing, bestselling author of Native Son and Black Boy, he established himself as an experimental literary intellectual in France who creatively drew on some of the leading ideas of his time - Marxism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and postcolonialism - to explore the sources and meaning of racism both in the United States and worldwide. Richard Wright in Context gathers thirty-three new essays by leading scholars relating Wright's writings to biographical, regional, social, literary, and intellectual contexts essential to understanding them. It explores the places that shaped his life and enabled his literary destiny, the social and cultural contexts he both observed and immersed himself in, and the literary and intellectual contexts that made him one the most famous Black writers in the world at mid-century.

Richard Wright Reader

Richard Wright Reader PDF Author: Richard Wright
Publisher: Da Capo Press, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 918

Book Description
"Richard Wright" (1908-1960) was one of the landmark authors of twentieth-century American literature as well as one of the most formidable and eloquent black voices of his day. In nearly 900 pages the editors have collected his most essential and evocative writing: essays like "Black Power" and "Pagan Spain"; selections from his autobiography Black Boy; most of the photographs and the complete text of Wright's folk history of the African-American experience 12 Million Black Voices; representative criticism, articles, letters, and poetry; the complete novellas "The Man Who Lived Underground" and "Big Black Good Man"; and generous excerpts from novels like Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, The Outsider, The Long Dream, Savage Holiday, and Lawd Today. The result is a beautifully wrought miniature panorama of the career of a writer whose immense talent was matched only by his humanity.

Richard Wright

Richard Wright PDF Author: Michel Fabre
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781617032219
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description


The Power of Purpose

The Power of Purpose PDF Author: Richard Wright
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers
ISBN: 199093160X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
'The only thing in life that you have 100 per cent control over are the thoughts in your head. When your thoughts are centred around the very essence of your purpose, and the meaning of your life, you unleash immeasurable power.' In 2016 Richard Wright was confronted with a diagnosis of rare pituitary cancer – a disease about which little is known, other than that it is almost invariably terminal. In attempting to deal with this bleak knowledge Richard defined what mattered most in his life, his true purpose, which was ensuring that his two young daughters would not have to grow up without their dad. Understanding his life purpose, he focused on overcoming the seemingly insurmountable challenges and obstacles that faced him, using the sheer power of his mind. Ongoing research into what the human mind is capable of, and sheer grit and determination, enabled him to complete four full Ironman races while undergoing harsh cancer treatment, with his daughters cheering him on. It wasn't easy and he had to dig deep to overcome setbacks and disappointments, but he never gave up. Instead, he found the strength, and the freedom, to speak his truth and to become the most authentic version of himself possible. Richard's story, told with raw honesty, humility and humour, provides proof that discomfort sparks outrageous achievement, especially when linked to our sense of purpose. It is a profound story of passion and endurance but, above all, it is a story that will resonate deeply for every one of us, whatever our life circumstances, revealing learnings that challenge us to think differently about our purpose in life. The Power of Purpose is an unforgettable account of one man's indomitable will to overcome crippling adversity. Its power will remain with you long after you have turned the last page. What Richard has done with The Power of Purpose is nothing short of a gift. A modern-day Man's Search for Meaning. – BRONWYN WILLIAMS, Futurist, Trend Analyst, Economist Utterly remarkable. Richard has a way of illuminating the darkness beyond possibility like nobody I've ever met. – MIKE STOPFORTH, Director of Beyond Binary, Entrepreneur, Speaker

The World of Richard Wright

The World of Richard Wright PDF Author: Fabre, Michel
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781617035173
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Book Description
Wide-ranging essays in which Wright's biographer probes the career, ideology, complex life, and achievements of America's premier black writer. "A major contribution to Wright studies" -Keneth Kinnamon. "Full of insights into cultural history and radical politics, race relations, and literary connections . . . sets a high standard for scholarship to come" -Werner Sollors

Richard Wright

Richard Wright PDF Author: Debbie Levy
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books
ISBN: 0822567938
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Book Description
Examines the life and times of the influential African-American writer, from his early life as the son of a Mississippi sharecropper to his successful literary career, and his later life spent outside the United States.