Bibliograph

Richard Wright, the life and times, Hazel Rowley

Type

Label

Richard Wright, the life and times, Hazel Rowley

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [593]-595) and index

resource.biographical

individual biography

Illustrations

illustrationsplates

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Richard Wright

Nature of contents

bibliography

Responsibility statement

Hazel Rowley

Sub title

the life and times

Summary

""How in hell did you happen?" the Chicago sociologist Robert Park once asked Richard Wright. Hazel Rowley shows how, chronicling with the dramatic drive of a novel Wright's extraordinary journey from a sharecropper's shack in Mississippi to international renown as a writer, fiercely independent thinker, and outspoken critic of racism. The author draws on recently discovered material to shed new light on Wright's relationships with a variety of women, including Carson McCullers, Gertrude Stein, and his longtime wife, Ellen Poplowitz, and male friends such as Langston Hughes, Nelson Algren, Ralph Ellison, and his occasional critic, James Baldwin. To Simone de Beauvoir and the existentialists it was Richard Wright, more than any other American writer, who was writing the "committed literature" they admired."--Jacket

Table Of Contents

Mississippi -- Whisper of liberty -- South side of Chicago -- Words as weapons -- Bastard intellectual -- Crossing the divide -- Change of fortune -- Grappling with bigger -- Marriage -- Fame -- Cuernavaca -- Backstage and onstage: Drama of native son -- Ellen Poplowitz -- Weathercock turns -- Wartime brooklyn -- Troublingly delicate matter -- Daily life -- Preparing to leave -- Crossing the atlantic -- Expatriates -- Argentina -- Existential dread -- Journey to the gold coast -- From bullfights to bandung -- Lonely outsiders -- "I am nobody" -- Stepping off this old earth

Classification