Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Harper Perennial Modern Classics (2008), Edition: Reprint, 336 pages
Description
Set in the American Deep South, each of the powerful novellas collected here concerns an aspect of the lives of black people in the postslavery era, exploring their resistance to white racism and oppression. Published in 1938, this was the first book from Wright, who would continue on to worldwide fame as the author of the novels Native Son and Black Boy.
Media reviews
The core of Wright's stories is the conflict between the Negro's instinct for self-preservation and an impersonal, unpredictable lynch machine... It is this central psychological core of Negro life in the Deep South, communicated in clear, unemotional prose, which gives Wright's stories their
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intensity, and a kind of impersonal eloquence in voicing the tragedy of his people. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member bness2
This book comprises four novellas by Richard Wright, with a short sketch of some of the author's experiences growing up in the Jim Crow South. The stories are candid and dark expressions of what it is like for Blacks to live under White oppression where their lives are totally controlled by the
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Whites. Two of the stories focus specifically on the relationship between Blacks and White communists as they join hand in the struggle to gain freedom and basic human rights. Very sobering material. Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1938
Physical description
336 p.; 8.04 inches
ISBN
0061450200 / 9780061450204