A pillar of African American literature, Richard Wright is one of the most celebrated and controversial authors in American history. His work championed intellectual freedom amid social and political chaos. Despite the popular and critical success of books such as Uncle Tom’s Children (1938), Black Boy (1945), and Native Son (1941), Wright faced staunch criticism and even censorship throughout his career for the graphic sexuality, intense violence, and communist themes in his work. Yet, many political theorists have ignored his radical ideas.
In The Politics of Richard Wright, an interdisciplinary group of scholars embraces the controversies surrounding Wright as a public intellectual and author. Several contributors explore how the writer mixed fact and fiction to capture the empirical and emotional reality of living as a black person in a racist world. Others examine the role of gender in Wright’s canonical and lesser-known writing and the implications of black male vulnerability. They also discuss the topics of black subjectivity, internationalism and diaspora, and the legacy of and responses to slavery in America.
Wright’s contributions to American political thought remain vital and relevant today. The Politics of Richard Wright is an indispensable resource for students of American literature, culture, and politics who strive to interpret this influential writer’s life and legacy.
Table of Content
1. Introduction
Part 1: Radical Politics
2. I Have Seen Black Hands
3. Wright’s Afromodern Search for Political Freedom
4. Richard Wright and the Critique of Class Theory
5. Alternative Readings of Bigger Thomas
6. Richard Wright’s Mission: Initiating a Politics of the Human
Part 2: Sexuality and Gender
7. Richard Wright and Black Women: Imagining the Feminine in The Outsider
8. Masculinity, Misogyny, and the Limits of Racial Community
9. He’s a Rapist, Even When He’s Not: Richard Wright’s Account of Black Male Vulnerability in the Raping of Willie Mc Gee
Part 3: Black Internationalism
10. Behind the Mc Gee Case
11. Seizing Freedom with Simone de Beauvoir
12. Revisiting Richard Wright in Ghana: Black Radicalism and the Dialectics of Diaspora
13. Psychology and Black Liberation in Richard Wright’s Black Power (1954)
Part 4: Rhetorical Registers
14. Blueprint for Negro Writing
15. Floating Facts on a Sea of Emotion: The Literary Journalism of Richard Wright
16. Many Dark Mirrors in Richard Wright’s 12 Million Black Voices
17. Richard Wright: The ‘Nature’ of Politics, the ‘Politics’ of Nature
Part 5: Uncle Tom’s Great-Grandchildren
18. Joe Louis Uncovers Dynamite
19. Notes toward a Political Economy of Life and Death: Reading Richard Wright with Frantz Fanon
20. Reading Richard Wright beyond the Carceral State: The Politics of Refusal in Black Radical Imagination
21. Slavery Continued, Freedom Sought: Wright’s Political Intellectual Journey
About the author
Jane Anna Gordon is associate professor of political science at the University of Connecticut and former president of the Caribbean Philosophical Association (2013-2016). She is author or editor of several books, including Creolizing Political Theory and Statelessness and Contemporary Enslavement.
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