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Richard Wright: The Life and Times
Consistently an outsider—a child of the fundamentalist South with an eighth-grade education, a self-taught intellectual, a black man married to a white woman—Richard Wright nonetheless became the unparalleled voice of his time. The first full-scale biography of the author best known for his searing novels Black Boy and Native Son , Richard The Life and Times brings the man and his work—in all their complexity and distinction—to vibrant life. Acclaimed biographer Hazel Rowley chronicles Wright’s unprecedented journey from a sharecropper’s shack in Mississippi to Chicago’s South Side to international renown as a writer and outspoken critic of racism.
Drawing on journals, letters, and eyewitness accounts, Richard Wright probes the author’s relationships with Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison, his attraction to Communism, and his so-called exile in France. Skillfully interweaving quotes from Wright’s own writings, Rowley deftly portrays a passionate, courageous, and flawed man who would become one of our most enduring literary figures.
“Splendid. . . . Richard Wright is well written, prodigiously researched, and nicely paced, a compelling evocation of the man, his craft, and the different worlds through which he moved.”—Michael J. Ybarra, Wall Street Journal
“A welcome and illuminating work . . . [Rowley] does an outstanding job. . . . Rich and revealing.”—Megan Harlan, San Francisco Chronicle
“A magnificent biography, subtle and insightful. . . . Rowley writes with style and grace, and her research on Wright is prodigious.”—Howard Zinn, The Week
Drawing on journals, letters, and eyewitness accounts, Richard Wright probes the author’s relationships with Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison, his attraction to Communism, and his so-called exile in France. Skillfully interweaving quotes from Wright’s own writings, Rowley deftly portrays a passionate, courageous, and flawed man who would become one of our most enduring literary figures.
“Splendid. . . . Richard Wright is well written, prodigiously researched, and nicely paced, a compelling evocation of the man, his craft, and the different worlds through which he moved.”—Michael J. Ybarra, Wall Street Journal
“A welcome and illuminating work . . . [Rowley] does an outstanding job. . . . Rich and revealing.”—Megan Harlan, San Francisco Chronicle
“A magnificent biography, subtle and insightful. . . . Rowley writes with style and grace, and her research on Wright is prodigious.”—Howard Zinn, The Week
638 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
7 people are currently reading
197 people want to read
About the author
Hazel Rowley
7 books29 followersHazel Rowley was a British-born Australian author and biographer.
Born in London, Rowley emigrated with her parents to Adelaide at the age of eight. She studied at the University of Adelaide, graduating with Honours in French and German. Later she acquired a PhD in French. She taught literary studies at Deakin University in Melbourne, before moving to the United States.
Rowley's first published biography, of Australian novelist Christina Stead, was critically acclaimed and won the National Book Council's "Banjo" Award for non-fiction in 1994. Her next biographical work was about the African American writer Richard Wright. Her best-known book, Tête-à-tête (2005), covers the lives of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (de Beauvoir had been the subject of Rowley's PhD thesis). Her last published book is Franklin & Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage, about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (2011).
Rowley suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in New York in February 2011 and died there on 1 March.
Born in London, Rowley emigrated with her parents to Adelaide at the age of eight. She studied at the University of Adelaide, graduating with Honours in French and German. Later she acquired a PhD in French. She taught literary studies at Deakin University in Melbourne, before moving to the United States.
Rowley's first published biography, of Australian novelist Christina Stead, was critically acclaimed and won the National Book Council's "Banjo" Award for non-fiction in 1994. Her next biographical work was about the African American writer Richard Wright. Her best-known book, Tête-à-tête (2005), covers the lives of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (de Beauvoir had been the subject of Rowley's PhD thesis). Her last published book is Franklin & Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage, about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (2011).
Rowley suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in New York in February 2011 and died there on 1 March.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 3, 2021
Page x (my book)
Both these famous American expatriates [Gertrude Stein and Richard Wright] are buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Stein was born into a wealthy German-Jewish family in Pennsylvania. Wright, son of a sharecropper, was born in a wooden shack in Mississippi.
This is a remarkable biography of the African-American writer Richard Wright. It captures brilliantly his life, his many friendships, and the time period.
Wright struggled out of poverty and racial prejudice in Mississippi. At a young age he valued books and reading, much to the annoyance of his family who wanted him to work and earn money.
What he also experienced in the American Jim Crow South – and to a lesser extent in the North - was hate. The hatred of the white man for the Black – and the hatred of the Black for the white. Any transgression by a Black person (more so a Black man towards a white woman) could have barbaric lethal consequences.
This hate is always smoldering in the writings of Richard Wright. It is also important to note that Wright was twice married to white women. The first marriage did not last long (less than a year), but the second did and he had two girls.
Page 49 leaving for Chicago in 1927
He was hoping to leave the South behind forever. Years later, he realized he could never really do that. The South had formed him and the South had seared him.
Page 288 Richard Wright
“The Negro who flees the South is really a refugee; he is so pinched and straitened in his environment that his leaving is more an avoidance than an embrace.”
Richard Wright, after moving North to Chicago, became enamored by Communism and joined the Communist Party. It should be pointed out that the Communist Party was one of the few organizations in the United States that admitted and accepted Black people (and to some extent women) on an equal basis. Ironically it adhered to the words of the Declaration of Independence – “all men are created equal”.
But Wright eventually tired of the rigidity and infighting found in the Party brought on by its adherence to Stalinist protocol. He slowly extricated himself during the 1940s.
Interestingly the author discusses the evolution of Wright’s books. Wright was always very open to the criticisms and suggestions of his agent, his publishers and the jurists of Book-of-the Month Club. They would strongly suggest alterations to his writings. Sometimes it was merely to shorten passages. But other amendments were not, particularly in “Native Son”
Page 183
By September 1939, his novel [Native Son] was no longer the same book that had crossed the judges [of Book of the Month Club] desk that summer. Bigger [the main protagonist] looked more guilty; the white woman was back on her traditional pedestal as the inaccessible object of desire [rather than being seductive].
“Native Son” was Richard Wright’s first book to make him “famous”. I read it some years back and found it to be a brutal story. I much preferred “Black Boy” an autobiography of Richard Wright’s Southern upbringing.
Richard Wright travelled extensively. After spending time in Chicago, he moved to New York City. Anyone who thinks New York was free and open during the 1940s should read the passages of this book on the discrimination that Richard Wright encountered to find housing, hotel accommodations, sitting in restaurants and the like.
He tired of life in America and moved his family to Paris where there was much less tension for a Black man married to a white woman.
He wrote constantly – and some of his works were journalism on the travels he made – to Ghana, Spain, Argentina, and a conference of Third World countries in Indonesia.
In this biography Richard Wright is depicted as a complex man with a lot of psychological baggage. Some of his books have themes of murder.
Page 410
Why are there so many mangled dead white women in Wright’s fiction? James Baldwin, looking back on Wright’s work after his death [in 1960 at the age of 52], believed that the root of the violence in Wright’s fiction was Wright’s own rage.
Obviously, this is disturbing and rather ironic considering Wright’s marriages - and the affairs he had with white women. Wright would often put up a congenial façade in front of other people. This could have reflected, in some ways, his upbringing in the Jim Crow South – where Black people have to camouflage their feelings in front of white people. It’s almost as if Richard Wright, in his writings extracted this turmoil and these demons and put it on the surface.
Page 319 – Senator Bilbo of Mississippi
“It [Black Boy] should be removed from the bookstores… It is a damnable lie from beginning to end…The purpose of this book is to plant the seeds of hate in every Negro in America against the white men of the South or against the white race anywhere… It is the dirtiest, filthiest, lousiest, most obscene piece of writing that I have ever seen in print… But it comes from a Negro, and you cannot expect any better from a person of his type.”
This is a very probing biography presenting us with the complexity of Richard Wright and the era.
You have to admire a man who grew up surrounded largely by illiterate sharecroppers – and then self-educated himself and travelled the world.
Both these famous American expatriates [Gertrude Stein and Richard Wright] are buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Stein was born into a wealthy German-Jewish family in Pennsylvania. Wright, son of a sharecropper, was born in a wooden shack in Mississippi.
This is a remarkable biography of the African-American writer Richard Wright. It captures brilliantly his life, his many friendships, and the time period.
Wright struggled out of poverty and racial prejudice in Mississippi. At a young age he valued books and reading, much to the annoyance of his family who wanted him to work and earn money.
What he also experienced in the American Jim Crow South – and to a lesser extent in the North - was hate. The hatred of the white man for the Black – and the hatred of the Black for the white. Any transgression by a Black person (more so a Black man towards a white woman) could have barbaric lethal consequences.
This hate is always smoldering in the writings of Richard Wright. It is also important to note that Wright was twice married to white women. The first marriage did not last long (less than a year), but the second did and he had two girls.
Page 49 leaving for Chicago in 1927
He was hoping to leave the South behind forever. Years later, he realized he could never really do that. The South had formed him and the South had seared him.
Page 288 Richard Wright
“The Negro who flees the South is really a refugee; he is so pinched and straitened in his environment that his leaving is more an avoidance than an embrace.”
Richard Wright, after moving North to Chicago, became enamored by Communism and joined the Communist Party. It should be pointed out that the Communist Party was one of the few organizations in the United States that admitted and accepted Black people (and to some extent women) on an equal basis. Ironically it adhered to the words of the Declaration of Independence – “all men are created equal”.
But Wright eventually tired of the rigidity and infighting found in the Party brought on by its adherence to Stalinist protocol. He slowly extricated himself during the 1940s.
Interestingly the author discusses the evolution of Wright’s books. Wright was always very open to the criticisms and suggestions of his agent, his publishers and the jurists of Book-of-the Month Club. They would strongly suggest alterations to his writings. Sometimes it was merely to shorten passages. But other amendments were not, particularly in “Native Son”
Page 183
By September 1939, his novel [Native Son] was no longer the same book that had crossed the judges [of Book of the Month Club] desk that summer. Bigger [the main protagonist] looked more guilty; the white woman was back on her traditional pedestal as the inaccessible object of desire [rather than being seductive].
“Native Son” was Richard Wright’s first book to make him “famous”. I read it some years back and found it to be a brutal story. I much preferred “Black Boy” an autobiography of Richard Wright’s Southern upbringing.
Richard Wright travelled extensively. After spending time in Chicago, he moved to New York City. Anyone who thinks New York was free and open during the 1940s should read the passages of this book on the discrimination that Richard Wright encountered to find housing, hotel accommodations, sitting in restaurants and the like.
He tired of life in America and moved his family to Paris where there was much less tension for a Black man married to a white woman.
He wrote constantly – and some of his works were journalism on the travels he made – to Ghana, Spain, Argentina, and a conference of Third World countries in Indonesia.
In this biography Richard Wright is depicted as a complex man with a lot of psychological baggage. Some of his books have themes of murder.
Page 410
Why are there so many mangled dead white women in Wright’s fiction? James Baldwin, looking back on Wright’s work after his death [in 1960 at the age of 52], believed that the root of the violence in Wright’s fiction was Wright’s own rage.
Obviously, this is disturbing and rather ironic considering Wright’s marriages - and the affairs he had with white women. Wright would often put up a congenial façade in front of other people. This could have reflected, in some ways, his upbringing in the Jim Crow South – where Black people have to camouflage their feelings in front of white people. It’s almost as if Richard Wright, in his writings extracted this turmoil and these demons and put it on the surface.
Page 319 – Senator Bilbo of Mississippi
“It [Black Boy] should be removed from the bookstores… It is a damnable lie from beginning to end…The purpose of this book is to plant the seeds of hate in every Negro in America against the white men of the South or against the white race anywhere… It is the dirtiest, filthiest, lousiest, most obscene piece of writing that I have ever seen in print… But it comes from a Negro, and you cannot expect any better from a person of his type.”
This is a very probing biography presenting us with the complexity of Richard Wright and the era.
You have to admire a man who grew up surrounded largely by illiterate sharecroppers – and then self-educated himself and travelled the world.
April 4, 2016
Excellent and engrossing biography of the controversial writer. A true autodidact with only an 8th grade education, Wright had virtually no support for learning from his stifling and dysfunctional home-life. His life-changing moment came when he pestered one of his grandmother's boarders into telling him the story of a novel she was reading. When his grandmother found out she denounced fiction as the devil's work, but it was too late to turn off his brilliant and inquisitive brain.
Growing up in the South, he was part of the Great Black Migration north, and both experiences shaped him. His writing career began while living and working at odd jobs in Chicago, bolstered primarily through friends and fellow-writers he met in the Communist Party. Although later disillusioned with the Party, it was his first opportunity to be an equal with whites and for his writing to be taken seriously by other writers.
Moving to New York he married, left the Party and began to make a living as a writer. Both of his major works, Native Son and Black Boy, were Book-of-the-Month Club selections. According to this biographer. the heavy editing and re-writing required by the Club's judges actually improved both books and served the author well, in spite of the fact that some themes were deemed too sensitive at the time and were left-out in the early editions. Wright, as a realist writer, was not universally lauded and came into conflict with some other black writers who felt he presented too unpleasant an aspect of black life. How sad that these talented people had to be ever-mindful of how they would be received by even the most enlightened white people.
Tired of the daily affronts to his dignity due to racial prejudice in the US, Wright moved his family to France and continued to live there and in England for the rest of his life. Wright felt more free in France than he ever did in the US, but was always the outsider. Sadly, even the freedom he at first enjoyed in Europe was soon curtailed due to the influx of Americans who brought their discriminatory practices and racist attitudes with them.
He was curious about many other cultures and countries and traveled widely in Spain and Africa, writing about his many experiences in those difficult places. Wright and the other ex-patriot artists were continually followed and spied upon by the CIA while abroad, to an astounding extent well-documented in the pages of this book. Wright's position was always tenuous due to his citizenship status and his political activities, and his ability to live and travel freely was made difficult by the authorities.
Wright was no saint and his womanizing and negligence as a husband and father are not over-looked by this author. He was a complicated man in a dangerous time for a thinking and writing person of color.
Growing up in the South, he was part of the Great Black Migration north, and both experiences shaped him. His writing career began while living and working at odd jobs in Chicago, bolstered primarily through friends and fellow-writers he met in the Communist Party. Although later disillusioned with the Party, it was his first opportunity to be an equal with whites and for his writing to be taken seriously by other writers.
Moving to New York he married, left the Party and began to make a living as a writer. Both of his major works, Native Son and Black Boy, were Book-of-the-Month Club selections. According to this biographer. the heavy editing and re-writing required by the Club's judges actually improved both books and served the author well, in spite of the fact that some themes were deemed too sensitive at the time and were left-out in the early editions. Wright, as a realist writer, was not universally lauded and came into conflict with some other black writers who felt he presented too unpleasant an aspect of black life. How sad that these talented people had to be ever-mindful of how they would be received by even the most enlightened white people.
Tired of the daily affronts to his dignity due to racial prejudice in the US, Wright moved his family to France and continued to live there and in England for the rest of his life. Wright felt more free in France than he ever did in the US, but was always the outsider. Sadly, even the freedom he at first enjoyed in Europe was soon curtailed due to the influx of Americans who brought their discriminatory practices and racist attitudes with them.
He was curious about many other cultures and countries and traveled widely in Spain and Africa, writing about his many experiences in those difficult places. Wright and the other ex-patriot artists were continually followed and spied upon by the CIA while abroad, to an astounding extent well-documented in the pages of this book. Wright's position was always tenuous due to his citizenship status and his political activities, and his ability to live and travel freely was made difficult by the authorities.
Wright was no saint and his womanizing and negligence as a husband and father are not over-looked by this author. He was a complicated man in a dangerous time for a thinking and writing person of color.
November 17, 2025
I first became aware of Richard Wright a little more than 40 years ago, when as a junior in high school, I read his memoir "Black Boy". I confess that while the book piqued my curiosity about Wright, I didn't then feel compelled to learn more about the man and the life he lived.
Before coming to this biography a month ago, the most I knew about Wright is that he had become an expatriate in the 1940s, moving with his family to Paris, where he lived until his death in 1960.
I have the author of this biography to thank for spurring me to broaden my knowledge of who Richard Wright was and the influence he exerted as an African American writer in Jim Crow America and by extension, Europe and Africa. Wright was born in Mississippi and grew up in the Deep South during the 1910s and 1920s before finally securing enough money through a variety of jobs to buy a passage by train to Chicago in 1927, age 19.
Wright went through various struggles in Chicago for the better part of a decade to secure gainful employment there. All the while, he never gave up on his dream to become a writer. (Eventually, Wright would move to New York, where he felt he would be in a better place to realize this dream.)
In 1938, while a part of the WPA Federal Writers' Project, Wright's collection of 4 novellas ("Uncle Tom's Children") was published. He won an award that year for the best book produced by nominated writers who were a part of the WPA Federal Writers' Project. Within the next 2 years, Wright would go on to write a novel, "Native Son". This was the first best-selling novel for an African American writer. According to the biography, "[c]ritics compared Native Son to Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath', Dreiser's 'An American Tragedy', Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment'. "
Furthermore, Wright's publisher Harper & Brothers (a major U.S. publisher) "had printed 170,000 copies of Native Son --- an extraordinary print run for a first novel. Within a few days, they reprinted the book. Within a few weeks, Native Son had sold more copies than any novel Harper had published in the previous 20 years. From New York to San Francisco, the book soared near the top of the best-seller lists." Indeed, for 1940, Native Son became "a literary phenomenon."
The biography takes the reader across the full scope of Wright's life, showing that even after he and his wife had settled in Europe in 1946 (they would have 2 daughters), Wright continued to struggle, despite his success, to be the writer that he wanted to be, and to fully express his views on the plight and injustices Jim Crow America heaped on his fellow African Americans -- as well as the struggles faced by people of color in Africa and Asia for independence and nationhood in the early Cold War years.
I very much enjoyed reading this book. It showed me how complex a man Richard Wright was, his role in helping advance the literary careers of James Baldwin and Chester Himes, and how difficult it was for American writers and artists in the late 1940s and 1950s to be able to freely express themselves through their art. After all, the U.S. had emerged from World War II as a premier world power and was not above exerting its considerable economic and political power (e.g. via the CIA) to ensure that American writers and artists (whether at home or abroad) tended to "stay in line" with the image Washington wished to project of itself --- vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and its satellite nations --- as a democracy throughout the world.
For anyone wanting to know about Richard Wright, this book is one of the best places from which to start.
Before coming to this biography a month ago, the most I knew about Wright is that he had become an expatriate in the 1940s, moving with his family to Paris, where he lived until his death in 1960.
I have the author of this biography to thank for spurring me to broaden my knowledge of who Richard Wright was and the influence he exerted as an African American writer in Jim Crow America and by extension, Europe and Africa. Wright was born in Mississippi and grew up in the Deep South during the 1910s and 1920s before finally securing enough money through a variety of jobs to buy a passage by train to Chicago in 1927, age 19.
Wright went through various struggles in Chicago for the better part of a decade to secure gainful employment there. All the while, he never gave up on his dream to become a writer. (Eventually, Wright would move to New York, where he felt he would be in a better place to realize this dream.)
In 1938, while a part of the WPA Federal Writers' Project, Wright's collection of 4 novellas ("Uncle Tom's Children") was published. He won an award that year for the best book produced by nominated writers who were a part of the WPA Federal Writers' Project. Within the next 2 years, Wright would go on to write a novel, "Native Son". This was the first best-selling novel for an African American writer. According to the biography, "[c]ritics compared Native Son to Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath', Dreiser's 'An American Tragedy', Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment'. "
Furthermore, Wright's publisher Harper & Brothers (a major U.S. publisher) "had printed 170,000 copies of Native Son --- an extraordinary print run for a first novel. Within a few days, they reprinted the book. Within a few weeks, Native Son had sold more copies than any novel Harper had published in the previous 20 years. From New York to San Francisco, the book soared near the top of the best-seller lists." Indeed, for 1940, Native Son became "a literary phenomenon."
The biography takes the reader across the full scope of Wright's life, showing that even after he and his wife had settled in Europe in 1946 (they would have 2 daughters), Wright continued to struggle, despite his success, to be the writer that he wanted to be, and to fully express his views on the plight and injustices Jim Crow America heaped on his fellow African Americans -- as well as the struggles faced by people of color in Africa and Asia for independence and nationhood in the early Cold War years.
I very much enjoyed reading this book. It showed me how complex a man Richard Wright was, his role in helping advance the literary careers of James Baldwin and Chester Himes, and how difficult it was for American writers and artists in the late 1940s and 1950s to be able to freely express themselves through their art. After all, the U.S. had emerged from World War II as a premier world power and was not above exerting its considerable economic and political power (e.g. via the CIA) to ensure that American writers and artists (whether at home or abroad) tended to "stay in line" with the image Washington wished to project of itself --- vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and its satellite nations --- as a democracy throughout the world.
For anyone wanting to know about Richard Wright, this book is one of the best places from which to start.
May 26, 2024
In grade 9 english class we used a reader that contained selections from various works. I recall a Poe tale (maybe two) and an excerpt from Richard Wright's Black Boy. Both stood out, but the Wright excerpt struck me as so beyond anything I knew (or would know) and it stayed with me.
Hazel Rowley does a fine job of situating Wright in his time and his family (his childhood is brutal, and the authorities in his family almost uniformly so), in the various cities and nations he lived in or visited, and in the political and social battles he was part of (or stayed away from). Well-written, well-sourced, and well-paced, though questions remain about his last year or so and about the doctor treating him, and a little more by way of epilogue on his widow, ex-wife, and children would have been appreciated. Recommended.
Hazel Rowley does a fine job of situating Wright in his time and his family (his childhood is brutal, and the authorities in his family almost uniformly so), in the various cities and nations he lived in or visited, and in the political and social battles he was part of (or stayed away from). Well-written, well-sourced, and well-paced, though questions remain about his last year or so and about the doctor treating him, and a little more by way of epilogue on his widow, ex-wife, and children would have been appreciated. Recommended.
June 12, 2022
How does a desperately poor, half-educated black man in 20th century America transcend the brutality and racism of his childhood to become one of the most notable writers of his era? The Australian biographer Hazel Rowley (1951-2011) set out to unravel this story forty years after the death of Richard Wright (1908-1960) and this biography is the result.
Richard Wright, The Life and Times (2001) was Hazel Rowley's second biography after her award-winning biography of Christina Stead (1994, see my review). She went on to write Tête-à-tête: The Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir & Jean-Paul Sartre (2005) and Franklin & Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage (2010, see my review) before her untimely death in 2011. In the obituary by Margalit Fox for the New York Times, her attraction to writing the lives of charismatic outsiders is explained:
The portrait of Richard Wright in Rowley's bio tells that story in fascinating detail. I haven't read Wright yet, though I have a copy of his memoir Black Boy on the TBR. Wright is a significant figure in American literature, transcending the trauma of his grandparents' slavery, a dysfunctional hyper-religious childhood, and limited education to become internationally famous and influential in changing attitudes. His writing made people realise the extent of racism in America and the damage that it caused to individuals and society.
He is most famous for his novel Native Son which was chosen as a Book of the Month in 1940 and became a best seller. Rowley tells the story of the passion which drove the portrayal of Bigger Thomas, a hoodlum from the black ghetto in Chicago, an unlikeable, tough bully who was full of fear and hate. Wright felt he had been naïve in his bestselling first book, Uncle Tom's Children, and had decided to write a book "so hard and so deep that they [Americans] would have to face it [racism] without the consolation of tears". So there is no idealism or sentimentality in Native Son. It features the angriest, most violent antihero ever to appear in black American literature.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/06/12/r...
Richard Wright, The Life and Times (2001) was Hazel Rowley's second biography after her award-winning biography of Christina Stead (1994, see my review). She went on to write Tête-à-tête: The Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir & Jean-Paul Sartre (2005) and Franklin & Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage (2010, see my review) before her untimely death in 2011. In the obituary by Margalit Fox for the New York Times, her attraction to writing the lives of charismatic outsiders is explained:
Ms. Rowley was often asked what united the seemingly diverse subjects of her books. “For those who have read all four, the thread is clear,” she wrote in an introductory passage on her Web site, (hazelrowley.com). “They were courageous people, who all, in some way, felt ‘outsiders’ in society. Above all, they were passionate people who cared about the world and felt angry about its injustices.” (NYT obituary, 19/3/2011)
The portrait of Richard Wright in Rowley's bio tells that story in fascinating detail. I haven't read Wright yet, though I have a copy of his memoir Black Boy on the TBR. Wright is a significant figure in American literature, transcending the trauma of his grandparents' slavery, a dysfunctional hyper-religious childhood, and limited education to become internationally famous and influential in changing attitudes. His writing made people realise the extent of racism in America and the damage that it caused to individuals and society.
He is most famous for his novel Native Son which was chosen as a Book of the Month in 1940 and became a best seller. Rowley tells the story of the passion which drove the portrayal of Bigger Thomas, a hoodlum from the black ghetto in Chicago, an unlikeable, tough bully who was full of fear and hate. Wright felt he had been naïve in his bestselling first book, Uncle Tom's Children, and had decided to write a book "so hard and so deep that they [Americans] would have to face it [racism] without the consolation of tears". So there is no idealism or sentimentality in Native Son. It features the angriest, most violent antihero ever to appear in black American literature.
Wright wanted to show that youths like Bigger were not inherently bad, that their intense frustration, hatred, and their crimes were a result of being shut out of American society. (p.151)
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/06/12/r...
November 21, 2020
I was always curious about Richard Wright's emergence from such humble circumstances in Mississippi to becoming one of great writers of the 20th century. An impressive journey and a complicated man. And it was indeed a journey both figuratively and literally, as Mr. Wright moved around a lot. He was more impressive as an author and as a spokesman against racism than as a husband and father.
February 27, 2019
Amazing bio. It flowed very smoothly and provided and unbiased view of Richard Wright and his life.
January 4, 2008
Amazing, until the utterly depressing end where he turns to the feds.
Read
March 15, 2011I just read that Hazel Rowley died at 59. That is quite shocking. She was a brilliant biographer.
October 22, 2013
Truly spectacular biography.
November 11, 2009
exelent bio!
July 13, 2017
Hazel Rowley was a wonderful Australian biographer. This exceptional bio of Wright is nearly as engrossing as 'Native Son' or 'Black Boy'. It was also timely, as no balanced biography of much worth had appeared since the seminal 'Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright' by Michel Fabre way back in the 60s. I loved this book so much that I carried it to work every day as I was reading it -- one of my co-workers took to asking me how 'Richard' was each day...
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews