The Cambridge Companion to Richard Wright (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

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 life and shed new light on his classic texts - Native Son, Black Boy. Other essays turn to his short fiction, and non-fiction as well as lesser-known work in journalism and poetry, paying particular attention to manuscripts in Wright's archive - unpublished letters and novels, plans for multi-volume works - that allow us to see the depth and expansiveness of his aesthetic and political vision. Exploring how Wright's expatriation to France facilitated a broadening of this vision, contributors challenge the idea that expatriation led to Wright's artistic decline.