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A Father’s Law, 1950s Masculinity, and Richard Wright’s Agony over Integration

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Richard Wright

Part of the book series: Signs of Race ((SOR))

Abstract

Richard Wright’s literary career begins with a lynching and ends with a serial murderer. “Big Boy Leaves Home,” the 1936 story that leads off Wright’s first book, Uncle Tom’s Children (1938), renders the vicious mob execution of a young black man falsely accused of rape. A Father’s Law, Wright’s last novel, left unfinished at his unexpected death in 1960 and published in 2008 on the centennial of his birth, centers on a murderer terrorizing the Chicago suburb of Brentwood Park.

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Authors

Editor information

Alice Mikal Craven William E. Dow

Copyright information

© 2011 Alice Mikal Craven and William E. Dow

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Cassuto, L. (2011). A Father’s Law, 1950s Masculinity, and Richard Wright’s Agony over Integration. In: Craven, A.M., Dow, W.E. (eds) Richard Wright. Signs of Race. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230340237_4

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