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Overview
Consistently an outsider—a child of the fundamentalist South with an eighth-grade education, a self-taught intellectual, a black man married to a white woman—Richard Wright nonetheless became the unparalleled voice of his time. The first full-scale biography of the author best known for his searing novels Black Boy and Native Son, Richard Wright: The Life and Times brings the man and his work—in all their complexity and distinction—to vibrant life. Acclaimed biographer Hazel Rowley chronicles Wright’s unprecedented journey from a sharecropper’s shack in Mississippi to Chicago’s South Side to international renown as a writer and outspoken critic of racism.
Drawing on journals, letters, and eyewitness accounts, Richard Wright probes the author’s relationships with Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison, his attraction to Communism, and his so-called exile in France. Skillfully interweaving quotes from Wright’s own writings, Rowley deftly portrays a passionate, courageous, and flawed man who would become one of our most enduring literary figures.
“Splendid. . . . Richard Wright is well written, prodigiously researched, and nicely paced, a compelling evocation of the man, his craft, and the different worlds through which he moved.”—Michael J. Ybarra, Wall Street Journal
“A welcome and illuminating work . . . [Rowley] does an outstanding job. . . . Rich and revealing.”—Megan Harlan, San Francisco Chronicle
“A magnificent biography, subtle and insightful. . . . Rowley writes with style and grace, and her research on Wright is prodigious.”—Howard Zinn, The Week
Synopsis
Consistently an outsider—a child of the fundamentalist South with an eighth-grade education, a self-taught intellectual, a black man married to a white woman—Richard Wright nonetheless became the unparalleled voice of his time. The first full-scale biography of the author best known for his searing novels Black Boy and Native Son, Richard Wright: The Life and Times brings the man and his work—in all their complexity and distinction—to vibrant life. Acclaimed biographer Hazel Rowley chronicles Wright’s unprecedented journey from a sharecropper’s shack in Mississippi to Chicago’s South Side to international renown as a writer and outspoken critic of racism.
Drawing on journals, letters, and eyewitness accounts, Richard Wright probes the author’s relationships with Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison, his attraction to Communism, and his so-called exile in France. Skillfully interweaving quotes from Wright’s own writings, Rowley deftly portrays a passionate, courageous, and flawed man who would become one of our most enduring literary figures.
“Splendid. . . . Richard Wright is well written, prodigiously researched, and nicely paced, a compelling evocation of the man, his craft, and the different worlds through which he moved.”—Michael J. Ybarra, Wall Street Journal
“A welcome and illuminating work . . . [Rowley] does an outstanding job. . . . Rich and revealing.”—Megan Harlan, San Francisco Chronicle
“A magnificent biography, subtle and insightful. . . . Rowley writes with style and grace, and her research on Wright is prodigious.”—Howard Zinn, The Week
San Francisco Chronicle
A welcome and illuminating work . . . [Rowley] does an outstanding job placing Wright within the social and political contexts of the many worlds through which he moved . . . Rich and revealing.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Acclaimed Biographer Hazel Rowley brings to life one of the most important writers of the 20th century: Richard Wright, the author of Native Son and Black Boy. Wright often found himself on the outside of things: a self-taught, learned man in the fundamentalist South; an African American married to a white woman in the North; an expatriate in France after WWII. Despite these seeming obstacles, Wright became a legendary voice in American letters. Rowley traces his path using journals, letters, and eyewitness accounts -- many of them newly discovered.Book Page
"Of the books written on Wright to date, [this] new biography . . . is more informative, comprehensive and insightful than any of the earlier efforts. . . . A superb book from start to finish."
— Robert Fleming
Booklist
"For the first time, Wright's complicated life and work are fully and justly illuminated."
Christian Science Monitor
"A first-rate biography worthy of its towering, larger-than-life subject."
— Gerald Early
New York Review of Books
“In her excellent, entirely readable Richard Wright, Hazel Rowley accomplishes what [previous biographer] Michel Fabre would have liked to do with once-guarded letters, aging witnesses, previously unidentified girlfriends. . . . Mostly, Rowley concentrates on telling Wright’s very powerful story.”
— Darryl Pinckney
New Yorker
“Absorbing.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“A welcome and illuminating work . . . [Rowley] does an outstanding job. . . . Rich and revealing.”
— Megan Harlan
Studies in American Naturalism
"Rowley has produced the definitive Wright biography. . . . Rowley's work is everything a literary biography should be: a rich, impeccably detailed rendering of the historical and biographical circumstances surrounding a writer's work. Critics and teachers of Wright will find Rowley's work indispensable. Through her careful research . . . Rowley offers readers new facets of Wright as a writer and person, demonstrating above all the heavy toll that Wright's heroic, groundbreaking anti-racism took on his financial, political, aned psychological well-being."
— Andrew Strombeck
Swan's Commentary
"Rowley is an unobtrusive biographer who has written a well-balanced and thoroughly readable book. It now stands as the best account of Wright's life."
— Peter Byrne
The Week
“A magnificent biography, subtle and insightful. . . . Rowley writes with style and grace, and her research on Wright is prodigious.”
— Howard Zinn
Wall Street Journal
“Splendid. . . . Richard Wright is well written, prodigiously researched, and nicely paced, a compelling evocation of the man, his craft, and the different worlds through which he moved.”
— Michael J. Ybarra
Washington Post Book World
“Thorough and engrossing from the first page to the last”
— Jame Lamar