The author grew up in the woods of Mississippi amid poverty, hunger, fear, and hatred. He lied, stole, and raged at those around him; at six he was a "drunkard", hanging about in taverns. Surly, brutal, cold, suspicious, and self-pitying, he was surrounded on one side by whites who were either indifferent to him, pitying, or cruel, and on the other side by blacks who resented anyone trying to rise above the common law. This is the author's powerful...

An autobiography describing the author's struggles against the dehumanizing southern social environment of the Jim Crow South.

"Richard Wright's dramatic imagination guided the creation of his masterpieces Native Son and Black Boy and helped shape Wright's long-overlooked writing for theater and other performative mediums. Drawing on decades of research and interviews with Wright's family and Wright scholars, Bruce Allen Dick uncovers the theatrical influence on Wright's oeuvre--from his 1930s boxing journalism to his unpublished one-acts on returning Black GIs in WWII to...

From watching a sunset to finding a beetle, Richard Wright's haiku puts everyday moments into focus. Paired with the photo-collage artwork of Nina Crews, Seeing into Tomorrow celebrates the lives of contemporary African American boys.

This documentary recounts the role of the Federal Writers Project as the largest cultural experiment in the nation's history. Program focuses on the role played by writers who recorded local and oral histories all over the nation, many finding national acclaim as a result.

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. The 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...