The Life and Works of Richard Wright: A Journey Through Struggle and Literature

What is the relationship between Childhood and the Struggle for Rights?

Born in the State of Mississippi, Richard Wright came from a poor family, and had deep experience of the sufferings and the frustration of the Blacks, considered an inferior race by the Whites. He, however, reveals the moral force and the courageous struggle of the Black Americans to reach equality and civil rights. Richard Wright was born near Natchez, in 1908, and brought up largely by relative. His family was poor and he had wide experience of the kind of oppression suffered by the Black Americans in both North and South. In 1946 he abandoned America for Paris, where he felt he could live without having to battle for his rights as a citizen. He died in Paris on November 28th,1960.

Major Works of Wright

Wright's best-known works are:

Native Son (1940), in which he depicts the murders committed by a confused black adolescence as the inevitable result of his upbringing. Black Boy (1945), Wright's autobiography in the form of a novel; it describes his early years in the South, and the mixture of fear and guilt generated by these experiences. The book describes what it felt to be a lower-class black youth living in the "Black Belt" in the 1920s and 1930s. He learnt , when still quite young never to give in. His first school was the street, where gangs of black and ehite boys would fight against one another with brutality and determination.