Richard Wright's Native SonAna Fraile, Ana María Fraile Marcos Coinciding with the preparations for the celebration in 2008 of Richard Wright's 100th birthday, this new collection of critical essays on Native Son attests to the importance and endurance of Wright's controversial work. The eleven essays collected in this volume engage the objective of Rodopi's Dialogue Series by creating multidirectional conversations in which senior and younger scholars interact with each other and with previous scholars who have weighed in on the novel's import. Speaking from distant corners of the world, the contributors to this book reflect an international interest in Wright's unique combination of literary strategies and social aims. The wide range of approaches to Native Son is presented in five thematic sections. The first three sections cover aspects such as the historical reception of Wright's novel, the inscription of sex and gender both in Native Son and in other African American texts, and the influence of Africa and of vortical symbolism on Wright's aesthetics; following is the study of the novel from the point of view of its adoption and transformation of various literary genres--the African American jeremiad, the protest novel, the crime novel and courtroom drama, the Bildungsroman, and the Biblical modes of narration. The closing section analyzes the novel's lasting influence through its adaptation to other artistic fields, such as the cinema and song in the form of hip-hop. The present volume may, therefore, be of interest for students who are not very familiar with Wright's classic text as well as for scholars and Richard Wright specialists. |
Contents
| 3 | |
Sexual Diversity in Richard Wrights Characterization | 39 |
The Nature of Black | 55 |
A Trans | 75 |
of Surplus Meaning in Native Son | 91 |
The African American | 119 |
Genre inand Wrights Native Son | 143 |
Biblical Imagery | 157 |
A Comparative Study of Richard | 187 |
Reflections on the Bigger | 203 |
Notes on Contributors | 225 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic African American Literature Afro-American American Exceptionalism American Jeremiad argues artistic audience Baldwin Bessie Mears biblical Bigger Figures Bigger Thomas Bigger's bildungsroman black Americans Black Power black women Brooks character Chicago Collection of Critical context Critical Essays critique depiction economic Eminem existential explains Fabre feel female film gangsta rap genres Gwendolyn Brooks Hakutani Henry Louis Gates heterosexual Hip Hop Culture Homo-eroticism homo-social human Hurston impact jeremiad Joyce Keneth Kinnamon killed liberation literary lives Mary Dalton Maud Martha Max's modern modernist movie murder narrative Native Son Historical naturalism naturalist Negro oppression Persona Gave Native Petry political race racial racism readers reflect relationship rhetorical Richard Wright Richard Wright's Native Robert Rowley scene sexual slavery social society stereotypes story suggests Surplus Meaning symbol tradition Unfinished Quest urban victim violence voice Womanhood in Native Wright's fiction writers York Zora Neale Zora Neale Hurston
Popular passages
Page 58 - The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought. In the main, her novel is not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy. She exploits the phase of Negro life which is "quaint," the phase which evokes a piteous smile on the lips of the "superior
Page 6 - When the reviews of that book began to appear, I realized that I had made an awfully naive mistake. I found that I had written a book which even bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears.
Page 161 - The myth narrates a confrontation of the American individual, the pure American self divorced from specific social circumstances, with the promise offered by the idea of America. This promise is the deeply romantic one that in this new land, untrammeled by history and social accident, a person will be able to achieve complete self-definition.