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Richard Wright

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. 
 
How to go on in a world where everything is set against you? With hope? In fear? Or, in violent struggle? In this gripping and disturbing book, Richard Wright weaves his own childhood recollections with those of Bigger Thomas - a young black man trapped in a life of poverty in the slums of Chicago, and unwittingly involved in a wealthy woman's death - to paint a portrait of insurmountable oppression. Through the strange pride Bigger takes in his crime, Wright brings us to confront the systems of justice we blindly assume are always on our side. 
 
Selected from the books Black Boy and Native Son by Richard Wright

Injustice

Vintage Minis

'Powerful as [Richard Wright] was - is - as a writer, nobody can surpass him in doing certain kinds of writing... He is courageous - he was able to look into areas that nobody at that time was willing to look at' Toni Morrison 
 
Cross Damon is disenchanted. At odds with society, and with himself, his idealism and sense of alienation have driven him to drink and incessant reflection. But when Cross is mistakenly reported to have died, he is suddenly free to put his ideals to the test - and a reign of terror and destruction ensues. 
 
 A counterpart to Wright's 1940 novel, Native Son, The Outsider is Wright's existential masterpiece. An epic exploration of criminality and oppression its publication established Wright as America's most daring, and damning writers.

The Outsider

Richard Wright's memoir of his childhood as a young black boy in the American south of the 1920s and 30s is a stark depiction of African-American life and a powerful exploration of racial tension. 
 
‘A compelling indictment of life in the Deep South between the wars’ Daily Telegraph 
 
 At four years old, Richard Wright set fire to his home in a moment of boredom; at five his father deserted the family; by six Richard was - temporarily - an alcoholic. It was in saloons, railroad yards and streets that he learned the facts about life, about fear, hunger and hatred, while his mother's long illness taught him about suffering. In a world of white hostility and subjugation it would be his love of books and pursuit of knowledge that would propel him to follow his dream of justice and opportunity in the north. 
 
A chronicle of coming of age under the racial prejudices of the American south, as much the story of a writer finding his voice, Black Boy remains one of the great, impassioned memoirs of the twentieth century.

Black Boy

The 'propulsive, haunting' and 'gripping' (Oprah) rediscovered classic that exposes the dark heart of America for an inncocent Black man on the run from the police 
 
Fred Daniels, a black man, is picked up randomly by the police after a brutal murder in a Chicago neighbourhood and taken to the local precinct where he is tortured until he confesses to a crime he didn't commit. After signing a confession, he escapes from the precinct and takes up residence in the sewers below the streets of Chicago. 
 
This is the simple, horrible premise of Richard Wright's scorching novel, The Man Who Lived Underground, a masterpiece written in the same period as his landmark books Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945) that he was unable to publish in his lifetime. 
 
Now, for the first time, this incendiary novel about race and violence in America, the work that meant more to Wright than any other ('I have never written anything in my life that stemmed more from sheer inspiration'), is published in full, in the form that he intended.

The Man Who Lived Underground

Bigger Thomas has grown up in Chicago&rsquo;s slums, reckless, angry and adrift. 
 
A respectable job with the affluent Dalton family provides hope but sets him on course for a catastrophic collision between his world and theirs. Hunted by citizen and police alike, and baited by prejudiced officials, Bigger finds himself the cause célèbre in an ever-narrowing endgame. 
 
First published in 1940, Native Son shocked readers with its candid depiction of violence and confrontation of racial stereotypes. It went on to make Richard Wright the first bestselling black writer in America. 
 
&lsquo;In addition to being a masterpiece, a Great American Novel' Guardian 
 
'The most important and celebrated novel of Negro life to have appeared in America' James Baldwin 
 
WITH AN AFTERWORD BY GARY YOUNGE

Native Son

'Wright's unrelentingly bleak landscape was not merely that of the Deep South, or of Chicago, but that of the world, the human heart' James Baldwin 
 
Natural disasters, cold-blooded murders, political agitation - all haunt these dark, dramatic novellas set in an American Deep South still corrupted by its slave-owning past. But at the heart of each are the stories of the men, women and children whose resistance against oppression will come to define their lives. 
 
Originally published in 1938, Uncle Tom's Children was Richard Wright's first published work. It would establish his reputation as both a powerful storyteller and a fierce chronicler of racism, violence and oppression in America at the time.

Uncle Tom's Children

'All eight men and all eight stories stand as beautifully, pitifully, terribly true... This is fine, sound, good, honorable writing rich with insight and understanding, even when occasionally twisted by sorrow' New York Times 
 
Hunted by the police for a crime he didn't commit, a man turns to the sewers and a life underground. Struggling to get work, another turns to wearing his wife's clothes in a desperate last attempt. Finding himself the object of derision, yet another man buys a gun only to discover its true power. 
 
Here are Richard Wright's stories of eight men - black men, living at violent odds with the white world around them. As suspenseful as they are excoriating, they stand alongside Wright's novels as some of the most powerful depictions of black America in the twentieth century.

Eight Men

Down by the Riverside

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