LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 17:6 June 2017
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Impact of Racism and Oppression of the Afro-American Psyche -
A Study of Richard Wright’s Select Works

Prof. C. N Annadurai, M.A., M.Phil. (Ph.D.)


Richard Wright (1908-1960) Courtesy: https://aalbc.com/authors/author.php?author_name=Richard+Wright

Abstract

The fiction of Richard Wright revolves around the suffering of the African-American people in the hands of the racist whites. It is essentially a reliving of the anguish of the Afro-American community, which had to endure an environment of brutal racism and endless hunger and poverty. It not only serves as a faithful account of the socio-political conditions of Wright’s times but also brings out the impact of such a life on the Afro-American population living in America. The present paper highlights the novelist's attempts to portray the impact of racism and oppression on the Afro-American psyche as seen in Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945).

Keywords: Richard Wright, Afro-American, racism, Afro-American literature, Native Son, Black Boy, American Hunger

Introduction

Richard Nathaniel Wright, the renowned Afro-American Writer was born in Mississippi in 1908. His father was an illiterate farmer and his mother was a schoolteacher. Wright’s family moved to Tennessee when he was six years old. When his father abandoned the family, Wright’s education suffered terribly. He moved from one school to another and struggled a lot to adjust with the new atmosphere and classmates. Even as young boy, Wright had seen and experienced the painful pangs of hatred, racism and oppression in his house and in the society. This scarred his young impressionable mind permanently and later emerged powerfully through his pen. He decided to become a writer to express himself as a black man. He moved to Chicago and improved his writing by reading Dostoyevsky, Theodore Dreiser, Henry James and Sinclair Lewis in public libraries. He worked as a postal clerk and then got a job in a relief agency and supported his mother and uncle’s family with the meagre income. Then, he associated himself with the communist party. He wrote for the communist paper regularly and in 1937 became an editor in Daily Worker. As a black writer, Richard Wright did much to help his people to free themselves from the bonds of slavery and racial oppression. Alan Wald puts it as, "Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African Americans during the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. Literary critics believe his work helped change race relations in the United States in the mid-20th century." (Alan Wald)

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Prof. C. N Annadurai, M.A., M.Phil. (Ph.D.)
Assistant Professor of English
Government Arts College (Autonomous)
Kumbakonam – 612002
Tamilnadu
India
cnannadurai@yahoo.com

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