Richard Wright New Readings in the 21st Century

by Dow, William; Craven, Alice Mikal

• ISBN13: 9780230112810
• ISBN10: 0230112811
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-06-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Richard Wright: New Readings in the 21st Centurypositions Wright studies in the 21st century in the best way possible. Richard Wright's legacy is updated in order to meet the needs of a growing international readership. This critical volume is also a step in making his accomplishments known to new generations of scholars.Gathering some of the most important Wright scholarship in the world, along with international work of emerging Wright critics, the collection contains unexplored themes and theoretical orientations centering on racism and spatial dimensions; the transnational and political Wright; Wright and masculinity, Wright and the American 1950s and 1960s; and some of the first analyses of Wright's recently publishedA Father's Law(2008). The collection combines literary and cultural theory with methods of archival and bibliographic research to provide an expanded vision of Wright's potential impact on thinking in the 21st century.

Author Biography

Alice Mikal Craven is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Film Studies at the American University of Paris. Her articles have appeared in the Tamkang Review and Shakespeare. William E. Dow is Professor of American Literature at the Universit Paris-Est (Marne-la-Valle) and teaches at The American University of Paris. He is the author of Narrating Class in American Fiction and the Managing Editor of Literary Journalism Studies.

Table of Contents

Series Editors' Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
(Re)Placing Richard Wright	p. 9
From New Chicago Renaissance from Wright to Fair Modern and Postmodern Eden: Richard Wright	p. 11
Wright among the ôG-Menö: How the FBI Framed Paris Noir	p. 27
A Father's Law, 1950s Masculinity, and Richard Wright's Agony over Integration	p. 39
Seeking Salvation in a Naturalistic Universe: Richard Wright's Use of His Southern Religious Background in Black Boy (American Hunger)	p. 55
Taking Sides: Racism and Spatial Dimensions	p. 69
ôWhite People to Either Sideö: Native Son and the Poetics of Space	p. 71
Becoming Richard Wright: Space and the WPA	p. 83
Wright: Pulp and Media, Reality and Fiction	p. 101
Savage Holiday: Documentary Noir and True Crime in 12 Million Black Voices	p. 105
Richard Wright's A Father's Law and Black Metropolis: Intellectual Growth and Literary Vision	p. 129
A Queer Finale: Sympathy and Privacy, in Wright's A Father's Law	p. 147
Wright: New Comparative Frameworks, Transnational Boundaries	p. 167
Changing Texts: Censorship, ôReality,ö and Fiction in Native Son	p. 171
ôThe Astonishing Humanityö: Domestic Discourses in the Friendship and Fiction of Richard Wright and Carson McCullers	p. 193
When Wright Bid McKay Break Bread: Tracing Black Transnational Genealogy	p. 215
The Political Art of Wright's ôFire and Cloudö	p. 235
Richard Wright and the CircumCaribbean	p. 249
Afterword	p. 267
Volume Bibliography	p. 273
Contributors	p. 279
Index	p. 285
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