Richard Wright Popular Books
Richard Wright Biography & Facts
Richard Nathaniel Wright (September 4, 1908 – November 28, 1960) was an American author of novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially related to the plight of African Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries suffering discrimination and violence. His best known works include the novella collection Uncle Tom's Children (1938), the novel Native Son (1940), and the memoir Black Boy (1945). Literary critics believe his work helped change race relations in the United States in the mid-20th century. Early life and education Childhood in the South Richard Nathaniel Wright was born on September 4, 1908, at Rucker's Plantation, between the train town of Roxie and the larger river city of Natchez, Mississippi. He was the son of Nathan Wright, a sharecropper, and Ella (Wilson), a schoolteacher. His parents were born free after the Civil War; both sets of his grandparents had been born into slavery and freed as a result of the war. Each of his grandfathers had taken part in the U.S. Civil War and gained freedom through service: his paternal grandfather, Nathan Wright, had served in the 28th United States Colored Troops; his maternal grandfather, Richard Wilson, escaped from slavery in the South to serve in the U.S. Navy as a Landsman in April 1865.Richard's father left the family when Richard was six years old, and he did not see Richard for 25 years. In 1911 or 1912 Ella moved to Natchez, Mississippi, to be with her parents. While living in his grandparents' home, he accidentally set the house on fire. Wright's mother was so angry that she beat him until he was unconscious. In 1915, Ella put her sons in Settlement House, a Methodist orphanage, for a short time. He was enrolled at Howe Institute in Memphis from 1915 to 1916. In 1916, his mother moved with Richard and his younger brother to live with her sister Maggie (Wilson) and Maggie's husband Silas Hoskins (born 1882) in Elaine, Arkansas. This part of Arkansas was in the Mississippi Delta where former cotton plantations had been. The Wrights were forced to flee after Silas Hoskins "disappeared," reportedly killed by a white man who coveted his successful saloon business. After his mother became incapacitated by a stroke, Richard was separated from his younger brother and lived briefly with his uncle Clark Wilson and aunt Jodie in Greenwood, Mississippi. At the age of 12, he had not yet had a single complete year of schooling. Soon Richard with his younger brother and mother returned to the home of his maternal grandmother, which was now in the state capital, Jackson, Mississippi, where he lived from early 1920 until late 1925. His grandparents, still angry at him for destroying their house, repeatedly beat Wright and his brother. But while he lived there, he was finally able to attend school regularly. He attended the local Seventh-day Adventist school from 1920 to 1921, with his aunt Addie as his teacher. After a year, at the age of 13 he entered the Jim Hill public school in 1921, where he was promoted to sixth grade after only two weeks. In his grandparents' Seventh-day Adventist home, Richard was miserable, largely because his controlling aunt and grandmother tried to force him to pray so he might build a relationship with God. Wright later threatened to move out of his grandmother's home when she would not allow him to work on the Adventist Sabbath, Saturday. His aunt's and grandparents' overbearing attempts to control him caused him to carry over hostility towards Biblical and Christian teachings to solve life's problems. This theme would weave through his writings throughout his life.At the age of 15, while in eighth grade, Wright published his first story, "The Voodoo of Hell's Half-Acre," in the local Black newspaper Southern Register. No copies survive. In Chapter 7 of Black Boy, he described the story as about a villain who sought a widow's home.In 1923, after excelling in grade school and junior high, Wright earned the position of class valedictorian of Smith Robertson Junior High School from which he graduated in May 1925. He was assigned to write a speech to be delivered at graduation in a public auditorium. Before graduation day, he was called to the principal's office, where the principal gave him a prepared speech to present in place of his own. Richard challenged the principal, saying "the people are coming to hear the students, and I won't make a speech that you've written." The principal threatened him, suggesting that Richard might not be allowed to graduate if he persisted, despite his having passed all the examinations. He also tried to entice Richard with an opportunity to become a teacher. Determined not to be called an Uncle Tom, Richard refused to deliver the principal's address, written to avoid offending the white school district officials. He was able to convince everyone to allow him to read the words he had written himself.In September that year, Wright registered for mathematics, English, and history courses at the new Lanier High School, constructed for black students in Jackson—the state's schools were segregated under its Jim Crow laws—but he had to stop attending classes after a few weeks of irregular attendance because he needed to earn money to support his family.In November 1925 at the age of 17, Wright moved on his own to Memphis, Tennessee. There he fed his appetite for reading. His hunger for books was so great that Wright devised a successful ploy to borrow books from the segregated white library. Using a library card lent by a white coworker, which he presented with forged notes that claimed he was picking up books for the white man, Wright was able to obtain and read books forbidden to black people in the Jim Crow South. This stratagem also allowed him access to publications such as Harper's, the Atlantic Monthly, and The American Mercury.He planned to have his mother come and live with him once he could support her, and in 1926, his mother and younger brother did rejoin him. Shortly thereafter, Richard resolved to leave the Jim Crow South and go to Chicago. His family joined the Great Migration, when tens of thousands of blacks left the South to seek opportunities in the more economically prosperous northern and mid-western industrial cities. Wright's childhood in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas shaped his lasting impressions of American racism. Coming of age in Chicago Wright and his family moved to Chicago in 1927, where he secured employment as a United States postal clerk. He used his time in between shifts to study other writers including H.L. Mencken, whose vision of the American South as a version of Hell made an impression. When he lost his job there during the Great Depression, Wright was forced to go on relief in 1931. In 1932, he began attending meetings of the John Reed Club, a Marxist literary organization. Wright established relationships and networked with party members. Wright .... Discover the Richard Wright popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Richard Wright books.
Best Seller Richard Wright Books of 2024
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Pagan Spain
Richard WrightA master chronicler of the AfricanAmerican experience, Richard Wright brilliantly expanded his literary horizons with Pagan Spain, originally published in 1957. An amalgam of ...
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Republic of Detours
Scott BorchertA New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice | Winner of the New Deal Book AwardAn immersive account of the New Deal project that created statebystate guidebooks to America, in the...
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Voices in Our Blood
Jon Meacham, Maya Angelou, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker & James BaldwinA literary anthology of important and artful interpretations of the civil rights movement and the fight against white supremacy, past and presentincluding pieces by Maya Angel...
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Cuckoo
Richard WrightThe fight to survive is all in the mind. There is nothing exceptional about Greg Summers, until the day he returns home to discover that his wife no longer recognises him and...
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Manchild in the Promised Land
Claude BrownWith more than two million copies in print, Manchild in the Promised Land is one of the most remarkable autobiographies of our timethe definitive account of AfricanAmerican youth i...
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Brown Boy
Omer AzizAn uncompromising portrait of identity, family, religion, race, and class that “cuts to the bone” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) told through Omer Aziz’s incisive and luminous...
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Demagogue
Larry TyeThe definitive biography of the most dangerous demagogue in American history, based on exclusive access to his papers and recently unsealed transcripts of his closeddoor Congressio...
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Comfortably Numb
Mark BlakeThe acclaimed, definitive biography of Pink Floyd, from their iconic beginnings in psychedelic, Swinging London to their historic reunion at the Live8 concert ("The most complete, ...
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Dreamer
Charles JohnsonFrom the National Book Awardwinning author of Middle Passage, a fearless fictional portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his pivotal moment in American history.Set against the...
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Pink Floyd All the Songs
Jean-Michel Guesdon & Philippe MargotinA comprehensive look at the unique recording history of Pink Floyd, one of the world's most commercially successful and influential rock bands. Pink Floyd All the Songs tells the f...
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The Afghanistan Papers
Craig Whitlock & The Washington PostA Washington Post Best Book of 2021The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year a...
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The Little Book of Lent
Arthur HowellsAn inspirational source of encouragement for Lent.‘The Little Book of Lent’ is a powerful anthology of readings from spiritual writers for each day of Lent, with accompanying scrip...
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Confessions
Saint Augustine & R. S. Pine-Coffin'Give me chastity and continence, but not yet'The son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, Saint Augustine spent his early years torn between conflicting worldviews. The Confe...
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His Work To See
Richard Wright"When the Stars threw down their spears And watered Heaven with their tears, Did He smile His work to see?" Did He who made the Lamb make thee?" The game is...
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Night Journey
Murad KalamNot since Richard Wright's Native Son has the education of a young man been rendered as daringly, defiantly, and emotionally galvanizingly as in Murad Kalam's Night Journey.Night J...
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The Vanishing of Flight MH370
Richard QuestCNN Aviation Correspondent Richard Quest offers a gripping and definitive account of the disappearance of Malaysian Airline Flight MH370 in March 2014.On March 8, 2014, Malaysian A...
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Giving Thanks to God
Sarah YoungIn Giving Thanks to God, the fifth study in the Jesus Calling® Bible Study Series, you will explore what God’s Word has to say about the many ways He provi...
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True Evil
Greg IlesA Southern doctor is pulled into a terrifying ring of murderous secrets in this powerhouse thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of the Penn Cage series.Dr. Chris She...
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Turning Angel
Greg Iles#1 New York Times bestselling author of Mississippi Blood and The Bone Tree keeps the secrets of the South alive in this “powerful…heartfelt…entirely gripping” (The Washington Post...
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The Penguin History of the Church
Henry ChadwickExamines the beginning of the Christian movement during the first centuries AD, and the explosive force of its expansion throughout the Roman world
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Trousdale Estates
Steven M. PriceFilled with beautiful, vivid photographs, Trousdale is the definitive history of the architecture and design that defined both Beverly Hills and the ultimate American Dream.Trousda...
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The Historical Figure of Jesus
E. SandersA biography of the historical figure of Jesus. The book studies the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, distinguishing the certain from the improbable, and assessing the...
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Invisible Men
Flores A. Forbes & Robin D. G. KelleyWinner of the 2017 American Book Award Flores Forbes, a former leader in the Black Panther Party, has been free from prison for twentyfive years. Unfortunately that makes him part ...
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The Ice Queen
Richard WrightI was there. I remember when darkness came into the world, when it unleashed a plague of damnation upon the races to which the world was given. I remember when the unholy heir of...
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Third Degree
Greg IlesFrom New York Times bestselling author Greg Iles comes his latest tour de force thriller an unforgettable plunge into a world of sex, violence, marital betrayal, medical malpracti...
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American Studies
Louis MenandAt each step of this journey through American cultural history, Louis Menand has an original point to make: he explains the real significance of William James's nervous breakdown, ...
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Reading with Patrick
Michelle Kuo“In all of the literature addressing education, race, poverty, and criminal justice, there has been nothing quite like Reading with Patrick.”The AtlanticA memoir of the lifech...
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The Outsider
Richard WrightFrom Richard Wright, one of the most powerful, acclaimed, and essential American authors of the twentieth century, comes a compelling story of one man's attempt to escape his past ...
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There Is a God
Antony Flew & Roy Abraham VargheseIn one of the biggest religion news stories of the new millennium, the Associated Press announced that Professor Antony Flew, the world's leading atheist, now believes in God. Fle...