New Publication

Posted on August 10, 2011 | No Comments

The Wright Connection is pleased to announce the publication of Richard Wright: New Readings in the 21st Century, edited by Alice Mikal Craven and William E. Dow (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

Gathering some of the most important Wright scholarship in the world, along with perspectives from emerging Wright critics, Richard Wright: New Readings in the 21st Century, explores new themes and theoretical orientations.

Essays center on modernism, racism and spatial dimensions, the transnational and political Wright, Wright and class, Wright and the American 1950s and 1960s, and some of the first analyses of Wright’s recently published A Father’s Law (2008). This dynamic collection combines literary and cultural theory with methods of archival research to provide an expanded vision of Wright’s impact on thinking in the twenty-first century.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Alice Mikal Craven and William E. Dow

Part 1: “(Re)Placing Richard Wright”

1. From New Chicago Renaissance from Wright to Fair Modern and Post-Modern Eden: Richard Wright, R. Baxter Miller

2. Wright Among the “G-Men”: How the FBI Framed Paris Noir, William J. Maxwell

3. A Father’s Law, 1950s Masculinity, and Richard Wright’s Agony Over Integration, Leonard Cassuto

4. Seeking Salvation in a Naturalistic Universe: Richard Wright’s Use of His Southern Religious Background in Black Boy (American Hunger), Robert J. Butler

Part 2: “Taking Sides: Racism and Spatial Dimensions”

5. “White People to Either Side”: Native Son and the Poetics of  Space, Isabelle Soto

6. Becoming Richard Wright: Space and the WPA, Thadious M. Davis

Part 3: “Wright: Pulp and Media, Reality and Fiction”

7. Savage Holiday: Documentary Noir and True Crime in 12 Million Black Voices, Paula Rabinowitz

8. A Father’s Law and Black Metropolis: Intellectual Growth and Literary Vision, Joyce Ann Joyce

9. A Queer Finale: Sympathy and Privacy in Wright’s A Father’s Law, John Charles

Part 4: “Wright: New Comparative Frameworks, Transnational Boundaries”

10. Changing Texts: Censorship, “Reality” and Fiction in Native Son, Claudine Raynaud

11. “The Astonishing Humanity”: Domestic Discourses in the Friendship and Fiction of Richard Wright and Carson McCullers, Julieann Ulin

12. When Wright Bid McKay Break Bread: Tracing Black Transnational Genealogy, Gary Holcomb

13. The Political Art of Wright’s “Fire and Cloud,” Robert Shulman

14. Richard Wright and the CircumCaribbean, John Lowe

Afterword, Alice Mikal Craven and William E. Dow

More information available here

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