Richard Wright

Abstract

Early in his career Richard Wright was asked to prepare a brief autobiographical note for The New Caravan (edited by Alfred Kreymborg et al. [New York: Norton, 1936]), which included his short story “Big Boy Leaves Home.” He devoted most of the sketch to external detail: his race; his birth in 1908 in Mississippi; his moves with his family to various southern towns; the end of his schooling at the age of fifteen; and the series of menial jobs he had held. It was characteristic of Wright to stress such objective facts, for his early encounter with Jim Crow society, his poverty and limited opportunity for education or employment, and his migration in 1927 to the South Side of Chicago made him a representative participant in black social history and gave him his inevitable literary topic. It was just as appropriate, however, that Wright concluded his early autobiographical note with the statement, “At present I’m busy with a novel,” because the assertion of the presence of an artistic sensibility despite unprepossessing circumstances announced his consistent literary theme—the struggle for self-determi-nation. Works such as Native Son and Black Boy greatly changed American literature, because the power of Wright’s craft secured such a large audience and affected it so deeply that it became impossible for readers or critics to continue to ignore black American writing.