Richard Wright

Richard Wright (1908–1960) was an American novelist, memoirist and poet, born near Natchez, Mississippi, and raised in poverty in the Jim Crow South. He left school early, worked a series of low-paid jobs and moved north to Chicago, where he began to write seriously and joined a circle of left-wing writers. His collection of stories Uncle Tom's Children appeared in 1938, and the novel Native Son made him famous in 1940. It was among the first bestsellers by a Black American author. His memoir Black Boy followed in 1945. Later he settled in Paris, where he lived among writers and thinkers and wrote further fiction and nonfiction until his death in 1960. Wright wrote plainly and forcefully about racism, fear and the pressures of American society on Black lives. His work opened a path for later Black writers and remains widely read and taught.