Author Description

Richard Wright was first a black man and second a writer. The life of this black man is inextricably bound to his writing. Author of 16 books, his first published volume appeared in 1938, when he was 30 years old. When he died at age 52, 22 years later, he had published a dozen books. I have divided rights life and work into five periods: his first 19 years in the violent white South, including his childhood and adolescence; 10 years of maturation in Chicago, when he became a revolutionary, a bohemian, and a professional writer; 10 years of professional success and personal frustration in New York; 10 years of seeking freedom and Paris; and, finally, his last two or three years of trauma and tragedy. Then, I have followed a general outline of relating his published works -- books, articles, poetry, and speeches -- to his life. Each period of his life was dominated by a set of ideas and philosophies that he personally embraced and then inculcated in his writing. A man motivated by ideas and novelist of ideas, his intellectual stature is a first consideration. His intellectual development and his Weltanschauung, or worldview, place him in the forefront of 20th century life and culture, and it is in this area that this book seeks to break ground. - Preface.