Afro-amerikansk forfatter, fødes 4. september 1908 i Plantation, Roxie, Mississippi, USA. (Dør 28. november 1960 i Paris). Hovedværk er romanen Native Son (1940; dansk 1942: Søn af de Sorte. Ved Tom Kristensen).
Bidrog også til den anti-kommunistiske antologi The God That Failed, 1949 (se Wright side 115-164).
Leksikal/site
Richard Wright (author) (Wikipedia.org)
Theme: The Richard Wright Connection (The C.L.R. James Institute; online at Internet Archive).
Articles about Richard Wright + The Constance Webb Pages (“Honoring Constance Webb Pearlstien: actress, model, writer, political activist, former wife of C.L.R. James [1946-1953], friend & first biographer of Richard Wright”): Richard Wright: A biography (P.G. Putnam, 1968, 443 p.).
Artikler
Richard Wright and the French Left
Richard Wright and the police state. By Bill Mullen (Tempest, October 6, 2021). Review of Richard Weight’s book, The Man Who Lived Underground (Library of America, 2021, 240 p.)
“The 2021 edition — the unpublished novel upon which Wright’s original 1944 story is based, and now available from Library of America — feels like a blast from our present. It is capitalist history written in blood. Tempest readers should run to it.”
See also the review article by Alan Wald: Protesting the protest novel (Against the Current, Issue 216, January-February 2022).
Native Son: Restoration of suppressed film starring, co-scripted by author Richard Wright. By Frank Anderson (World Socialist Web Site, 23 February 2021)
“Seventy years after it was shot, the first film adaptation of one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century is finally available in the US in a definitive version.”
Such is our challenge (Against the Current, Issue 204, January-February 2020)
Richard Wright introduced by Scott McLemee: “The English translation of Richard Wright’s address to the Revolutionary Democratic Assembly in Paris in December 1948 seems to have escaped the notice of the biographers and literary scholars who have otherwise been extremely thorough in documenting the author’s life and work.” See Richard Wrights speech (ibid.).
Richard Wright and Stalinism. By Dan Katz (Solidarity & Workers’ Liberty, Issue 497, 26 February 2019)
“Richard Wright′s relationship with the Communist Party is — apparently — described in a twenty page essay which is contained in the book The God That Failed (1950).”
On Richard Wright’s centennial: The great outsider. By Alan Wald (Against the Current, No.138, January-February 2009)
“A driven, occasionally ham-fisted author and controversial Left-wing activist, Wright was principally fascinated by the psychology of oppressed people.”
Richard Wright: ‘Using words as a weapon’. By Annie Zirin (International Socialist Review, Issue 14, October-November 2000)
“Richard Wright belonged to a generation of American artists whose work and political views were profoundly influenced by the experience of the Great Depression and the magnificent working-class battles of that era. Wright’s novels and essays cut to the heart of a racist society in unflinching and powerful language.”
Boganmeldelser
Den afroamerikanske underklasses lidelser – Richard Wrights Søn af de sorte. Af Martin Laurberg (Litteratursiden.dk, 2. januar 2007)
” Denne dobbelthed mellem tragisk socialrealisme og litterær propaganda er gennemgående i den afroamerikanske forfatter Richard Wrights deprimerende klassiker Søn af de sorte fra 1940.”
Onkel Toms Børn. Af Pernille Høiris Pedersen (Socialistisk Arbejderavis, nr. 263, 6. december 2006)
“Uden at ryste på hånden, og uden glorificering eller patos, beretter Wright om de sortes kår i sydstaterne i 1930’ernes USA under racisme, adskillelse og undertrykkelse.”
Classic read: Native Son. By Richard Bradbury (Socialist Review, Issue 370, June 2012; online at Internet Archive)
“Richard Wright had every good reason to be angry. He grew up in the US Deep South in the 1920s and 1930s, when segregation and systematic violence towards African-Americans were at their height.”
Native Son and Revolution. By J.R. Johnson [i.e. C.L.R. James] (New International, Vol.6, No.4, May 1940)
“In our age literature, especially literature of this kind, cannot be divorced from politics. Wright is a Stalinist. In this novel a scrupulous artistic integrity enables him to draw white Communists, if not with the same success as Negroes, yet without bias or subservience to the Stalinist conception of the party and the party ‘line’.”
The voice of Richard Wright. By James M. Fenwick (The New International, Vol.7, No.10, November 1941). Review of Richard Wright, Bright and Morning Star (International Publishers, 1941, 48 p.)
Bøger på dansk af Richard Wright
Søn af de sorte [Native son]. Oversat af Tom Kristensen (Gyldendal, 1942, 398 sider)
Sort ungdom [Black boy]. Oversat af Tom Kristensen (Gyldendalske Boghandel/Nordisk Forlag, 1946, 257 sider)
Vidnet [The outsider]. Oversat af Elsa Gress (Gyldendal, 1954, 395 sider)
Onkel Toms børn [Uncle Tom’s children]. Oversat af Kurt Kreutzfeld (Gyldendal, 1957, 246 sider)
Den lange drøm [The long dream]. Oversat af Kurt Kreutzfeld (Gyldendal, 1959, 339 sider)
Nuancer i sort [Eight men]. Oversat af Jørgen Årup Hansen (Spektrum, 1961, 253 sider)
Glad dag i Chicago [Lawd today]. Oversat af Knud Müller (Gyldendal, 1965, 243 sider)
Vidner. På dansk ved Elsa Gress (Gyldendal, 1966, 417 sider)
Sort sult [American hunger]. På dansk ved Kurt Kreutzfeld (Gyldendal, 1978, 187 sider)
Se også:
The pull of Communist culture. By Martin Comack (New Politics, December 20, 2020). Review of Milton A. Cohen, The Pull of Politics: Steinbeck, Wright, Hemingway, and the Left in the Late 1930s (University of Missouri Press, 2018, 373 p.).
