https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks Richard Wright en-us 2022-02-28 12:33:30 UTC 2024-03-31 02:36:46 UTC hello@padlet.com gpassa1056 https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks/wish/2069383402 Richard Wright, a black American best-selling author during the 1940s and 1950s, believed the American Dream was unattainable for blacks as evidenced by the irredeemable, hopeless characters he created; the feelings of disillusionment and despair he described in the portion of his autobiography not published until after his death; the disappointments he experienced with Communist Party; and the relentless racism that drove him to move away from America.

]]> 2022-02-28 12:46:39 UTC https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks/wish/2069383402 gpassa1056 https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks/wish/2069395257 Wright, in a search to find his own American Dream, attempted to find it within the Communist Party. “It was not the economics of Communism, nor the great power of trade unions, nor the excitement of underground politics that claimed me; my attention was caught by the similarity of the experiences of workers in other lands, by the possibility of uniting scattered but kindred peoples into a whole. It seemed to me that here at last, in the realm of revolutionary expression, Negro experience could find a home, a functioning value and role.” Wright was trying to seek fulfillment in the Communist party, which was outside the standard American framework for a place to flourish. He eventually became disillusioned by Communist party in America. Wright thought he could make a difference and communicate the ideals of the Communist party in America to the Negroes, but instead, he progressively moved towards existentialism.]]> 2022-02-28 12:54:41 UTC https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks/wish/2069395257 gpassa1056 https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks/wish/2069403066 Wright published an autobiography called, “Black Boy”, which described a classic American success story, however the published version was not the full story of his life. “In this version, Wright had gone on to describe the experiences in the North that shaped the pessimism of ''Native Son'' - his near-starvation in the Chicago ghetto, his lonely drive toward self-education, his Kafkaesque involvement with the Communist Party… Still, he agreed not only to cut almost a third of the manuscript, but also to alter the tone by adding five concluding pages that contained that hopeful 'hazy notion.’” Some might argue that the ending of Wright’s autobiography “Black Boy” hints that Wright might, at least in 1945 at the time of the book’s publication, have believed the American Dream was attainable. Wright ends his story on a hopeful note, leaving Mississippi for a journey north to Chicago as part of the “Great Migration” with his head “'full of a hazy notion that life could be lived with dignity, that the personalities of others should not be violated, that men should be able to confront other men without fear or shame. . . .' In actuality, Wright, pressured by his editors, cut a third of his original book – the part that described the horrors he endured in Chicago where he nearly starved alone in a ghetto. 

]]> 2022-02-28 13:00:17 UTC https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks/wish/2069403066 gpassa1056 https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks/wish/2069404719 Wright’s literature often did not display the hopefulness that many other black writers displayed at the time. “Starting in the 1940s, Ellison and Baldwin criticized Wright for his insistence on dramatizing this ineluctable subjugation; they saw Wright himself as submitting, in the process, to Black oppression in America. They believed, each in his own fashion, that Black literature ought to capture hope, possibility, beauty, and endurance. Transcendence and, more important, transformation were possible until they weren’t.” Wright focuses on relaying the horrors of black oppression and is criticized, most notably by James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison - two black writers who Wright eventually will mentor, for ignoring the  beauty and potential of black lives. While their works and those of the Harlem Renaissance writers before them project some hopefulness - an underlying desire to reflect the humanity of black people through their characters so that readers might work to make American society more inclusive - many of Wright’s characters, especially his most despicable protagonist, Bigger Thomas in “Native Son,” are awful criminals so violently oppressed that they lack intelligence, kindness, or empathy. The absence of any path to a happy ending for Wright’s black characters underscores Wright’s belief that there is no room in the American dream for blacks.

]]> 2022-02-28 13:01:24 UTC https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks/wish/2069404719 gpassa1056 https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks/wish/2069407305 Wright was never fully satisfied with what America gave him, and with that dissatisfaction came a yearn to live elsewhere. “‘I felt relieved’, Wright said later, ‘When my ship sailed past the statue of liberty.’Many Jews have written about what it was like to pass the Statue of Liberty. For Richard Wright, the irony was saying how good it felt to sail past the Statue of Liberty on his way out.” Finally, there are those who will argue Wright lived the American Dream. After all, he was the grandson of four former slaves and son of a Mississippi sharecropper.  He had no formal education past eighth grade, yet, his first book, “Native Son,” sold over 215,000 copies in the first three weeks of publication and his autobiography, “Black Boy,” sold more than half a million copies, making him rich and famous. Despite this, at age 39, he chose self-imposed exile over the constant pain of racism,  moving himself, his white wife, and four-year old daughter to France.  During 13 years in France, he wrote seven books that were not well-received and died penniless and alone at age 52.]]> 2022-02-28 13:03:16 UTC https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks/wish/2069407305 gpassa1056 https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks/wish/2076942624 2022-03-04 01:00:30 UTC https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks/wish/2076942624 gpassa1056 https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks/wish/2076970180 2022-03-04 01:15:26 UTC https://padlet.com/gpassa1056/Bookmarks/wish/2076970180