Richard Wright Books In Order

Native Son

Bigger Thomas’ violent acts gave him a sense of freedom and identitySet in the 1930’s, the portrayal of poverty and feelings of helplessness experienced by people in the inner city is as meaningful today as when it was written. Native Son is the story of Bigger Thomas, a black youth whose tragic life was drawn from Richard Wright’s own experiences and memories of the Chicago ghetto. Although segregated, Wright held that the noisy crowded physical aspect of the urban environment, with its stimulating sense of power, fulfillment, and possible achievement brought forth a more obstreperous reaction than in the South. Vivid, unforgettable and heartbreaking, Wright’s masterpiece forces us to witness the inhumanity of our society. The power and compassion of James Earl Jones’ performance of Native Son sears this classic work into our memories forever. Richard Wright 1908 1960 left Memphis at 19 to live in Chicago where he became a writer. He grew to be considered not only the leading black author in the United States, but also a major heir of the naturalistic tradition. Wright spent his last years in Paris, where he died in 1960. James Earl Jones is one of this country’s greatest artistic resources, as his acclaimed performances on stage, screen and television have proved. He has starred in such films as Dr. Strangelove, The Great White Hope, The Man, Cry the Beloved Country, and A Family Thing, and on Broadway in Othello and Fences, for which he won the Tony Award.

The Outsider

Wright presents a compelling story of a black man’s attempt to escape his past and start anew in Harlem. Cross Damon is a man at odds with society and with himself, a man who hungers for peace but who brings terror and destruction wherever he goes. As Maryemma Graham writes in her Introduction to this edition, with its restored text established by the Library of America, ‘The Outsider is Richard Wright’s second installment in a story of epic proportions, a complex master narrative designed to show American racism in raw and ugly terms…
The stories of Bigger Thomas…
and Cross Damon bear an uncanny resemblance to many contemporary cases of street crime and violence. There is also a prophetic note in Wright’s construction of the criminal mind as intelligent, introspective, and transformative.’In addition to the Introduction by Maryemma Graham, this edition includes a notes section by Arnold Rampersad.

Savage Holiday

Erskine Fowler, an insurance executive forced by corporate intrigue into the long holiday of retirement, becomes enmeshed in a weekend of bizarre and bloody circumstances that reveal his troubled psyche and desperation. Naked and accidentally locked out of his apartment, he inadvertently causes a boy to fall to his death. Driven by guilt and by a compulsion to conceal his involvement, Fowler befriends the boy’s mother. Yet his self destructive rages to redeem himself lead to mayhem. This is Richard Wright’s only published work with no black characters. He was unsure about how his readers would react to this bravely experimental novel. Shying away from the racial problem he depicted in his other works, he writes here a riveting study in psychological fiction. It deserves to be regarded anew as work from a master.

The Long Dream

Now available in a new edition. Set in a small town in Mississippi, The Long Dream is a novel rich in characterization and plot that dramatizes Richard Wright’s themes of oppression, exploitation, corruption, and flight. It is the story of Fishbelly called Fish, the son of Tyree Tucker, a prominent black mortician and owner of a brothel whose wealth and power were attained by forging business arrangements with corrupt white police officers and politicians. The riveting narrative centers on the explosive and tragic events that shape and alter the relationship between Fish and his father.

Lawd Today!

Back in its original unabridged form, a novel of Depression era Chicago.

Rite of Passage

‘Johnny, you’re leaving us tonight…
‘Fifteen year old Johnny Gibbs does, well in school, respects his teachers, and loves his family. Then suddenly, with a few short words, his idyllic life is shattered. He learns that the family he has loved all his life is not his own, but a foster family. And now he is being sent to live with someone else. Shocked by the news, Johnny does the only thing he can think of: he runs. Leaving his childhood behind forever, Johnny takes to the streets where he learns about living life the hard way. Richard Wright, internationally acclaimed author of Black Boy and Native Son, gives us a coming of age story as compelling today as when it was first written, over fifty years ago. Johnny Gibbs arrives home jubilantly one day with his straight A report card to find his belongings packed and his mother and sister distraught. Devastated when they tell him that he is not their blood relative and that he is being sent to a new foster home, he runs away. His secure world quickly shatters into a nightmare of subways, dark alleys, theft and street warfare…
. Striking characters, vivid dialogue, dramatic descriptions, and enduring themes introduce a enw generation of readers to Wright’s powerful voice. SLJ. Notable 1995 Children’s Trade Books in Social Studies NCSS/CBC

Uncle Tom’s Children

Set in the American Deep South, each of the powerful novellas collected here concerns an aspect of the lives of black people in the post slavery era, exploring their resistance to white racism and oppression. Originally published in 1938, Uncle Tom’s Children was the first book from Richard Wright, who would continue on to worldwide fame as the author of numerous works, most notably the acclaimed novel Native Son and his autobiography, Black Boy.

12 Million Black Voices

12 Million Black Voices, first published in 1941, combines Wright’s prose with startling photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam from the Security Farm Administration files compiled during the Great Depression. The photographs include works by such giants as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Arthur Rothstein. From crowded, rundown farm shacks to Harlem storefront churches, the photos depict the lives of black people in 1930s America their misery and weariness under rural poverty, their spiritual strength, and their lives in northern ghettos. Wright’s accompanying text eloquently narrates the story of these 90 pictures and delivers a powerful commentary on the origins and history of black oppression in this country. Also included are new prefaces by Douglas Brinkley, Noel Ignatiev, and Michael Eric Dyson. ‘Among all the works of Wright, 12 Million Black Voices stands out as a work of poetry,…
passion,…
and of love.’ David Bradley ‘A more eloquent statement of its kind could hardly have been devised.’ The New York Times Book Review

Eight Men

‘Wright’s unrelenting bleak landscape was not merely that of the Deep South, or of Chicago, but that of the world, of the human heart,’ said James Baldwin, and here, in these powerful stories, Richard Wright takes readers into this landscape one again. Eight Men presents eight stories of black men living at violent odds with the white world around them. As they do in his classic novels, the themes here reflect Wright’s views on racism and his fascination with what he called ‘the struggle of the individual in America.’

Haiku

‘As good a Haiku poet as this country has ever produced.’ Seattle WeeklyLike all great writers, Richard Wright never failed to create works of breathtaking originality, depth, and beauty. With Native Son he gave us Bigger Thomas, still one of the most provocative and controversial characters in fiction. With Black Boy he offered a candid and searing depiction of racism and poverty in America. And now, forty years after his death, he has bestowed us with one of the finest collections of Haiku in American literature. Wright became enamored of Haiku at the end of his life, and in this strict, seventeen syllable form he discovered another way of looking at the world. He rendered images of nature and humanity that raised questions and revealed strikingly fresh perspectives. The publication of this collection is not only one of the greatest posthumous triumphs of American letters but also a final testament to the noble spirit and enduring artistry of Richard Wright.

Black Boy

Richard Wright’s devastating autobiography of his childhood and youth in the Jim Crow South

His training by his elders was strict and harsh to prepare him for the ‘white world’ which would be cruel. Their resentment of those trying to escape the common misery made his future seem hopeless. It was necessary to grow up restrained and submissive in southern white society and to endure torment and abuse.

Wright tells of his mental and emotional struggle to educate himself, which gave him a glimpse of life’s possibilities and which led him to his triumphant decision to leave the South behind while still a teenager to live in Chicago and fulfill himself by becoming a writer.