Product details
- ISBN 9780313312397
- Publication Date: 01 Jun 2008
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Richard Wright is one of the most important African American writers. He is also one of the most prolific. Best known as the author of Native Son, he wrote 7 novels; 2 collections of short fiction; an autobiography; more than 250 newspaper articles, book reviews, and occasional essays; some 4,000 verses; a photo-documentary; and 3 travel books. By attacking the taboos and hypocrisy that other writers had failed to address, he revolutionized American literature and created a disturbing and realistic portrait of the African American experience. This encyclopedia is a guide to his vast and influential body of works.
Entries cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with an extensive bibliography. Literature students will value this work for its thorough overview of Wright's canon, while students in history and social studies classes will welcome it as a means of understanding the African American struggle for civil rights through literature.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. is Professor of English and African American Studies at Dillard University and was previously the Lawrence Durgin Professor of Literature at Tougaloo College. His previous books include Redefining American Literary History (1990), Black Southern Voices (1992), and Trouble the Water: 250 Years of African-American Poetry (1997). His work has also appeared in such journals as Southern Quarterly, Obsidian, and Callaloo.
Robert J. Butler is Professor of English at Canisius College. His books include The Critical Response to Ralph Ellison (Greenwood, 1998), The Critical Response to Richard Wright (Greenwood, 1995), The City in African American Literature (1995), and Richard Wright's Native Son: The Emergence of a New Black Hero (1991). His articles have been published in The Centennial Review, The Dreiser Newsletter, CLA Journal, MELUS, and other journals.
