-
Racism And Oppression In Black American Literature
[AN EXAMPLE OF RICHARD WRIGHT’S BLACK BOY]
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 4]
Page 2 of 4
-
-
-
1.2 RICHARD WRIGHT’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Richard Wright, the grand son of slaves was born in Natchez Mississippi
on 4th of September 1908. His father deserted the family in 1914. When
Richard was ten years old, his mother had a paralytic shock. The family
was extremely poor. After a brief education, he was forced to seek
employment in other to support his mother. He had a difficult childhood
which was characterized by hopelessness, insecurity and hunger as
portrayed in his autobiography Novel, BlackBoy. Wright worked in a
series of menial jobs in Memphis. He wanted to continue his education by
using the local library but Jim Crow laws prevented this. Richard
Wright solved this by pretending he was collecting a book for a white
man.
After passing a civil service exam, Wright find a job as a post
office clerk. When the wall street crash and the beginning of depression
was over, Wright lost his job for a period. He found employment with
the Negro Burial Society but that came to an end in 1931 and he was
forced to go on relief after several jobs, the relief office found his
work with the Federal Writer Project. This enabled him to publish his
story Superstition in the Magazine Abbot’s Monthly.
In 1932, Wright
began attending meeting of the literary group at the John Reed Club he
meets several Marxist at the club and later in the year, he joined the
American Communist Party. His poems, short stories and essays are
accepted by various left using journal including the new masses and
international literature, his poem Between The World And Me and a short
story BigBoy Leaves Home were both based on the lunching of a black man
that he had witnessed when he was a child.
In May 1937, Wright moved
to New York where he became Harlem editor of the daily worker and a new
literary quarterly new challenge. The following year, a collection of
short stories about racism in the United States titled Uncle Tom’s
Chicken was publish and Wright announced that all royalties would be
used to help to pay the appeal cost of Earl Browder, the general
secretary of the American Communist Party who had been sentenced to four
years in prison for misusing a passport.
The publisher accepted
Wright’s novel, Native Son in 1940. The book of the mouth club selected
the novel as its March selection, therefore, ensuring large sales and
publicity. Over a quarter of a million copies were sold within four
weeks, making it the fastest selling large novel in twenty years.
Wright’s next book, Twelve million Black Voices (1941) was a
sociological study of black migration from the rural south to the urban
north. By 1944, Wright left the American Communist Party and published
an article in the Atlantic Monthly titled The God that Failed, his short
novel, The Man Who Lived Underground appeared in 1944.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 4]
Page 2 of 4
-
-
ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]It is known fact that racism and oppression are one of the major issues in Black American literature. This study will attempt to make readers realize these themes in Richard Wright’s Black Boy by analyzing the concept of racial segregation of Black in America. We will examine the historical perspective of Black writing narrative and the effects of racism and oppression, which include poverty, hunger assault etc. and the ways through which the blacks reacted to racism. We can claim that Bl ... Continue reading---
