Richard Wright

I don't know how many of you guys heard about Richard Wright, but he was an American author in the mid-20th century who wrote many novels and short stories. Wright's literature provided a real image of the racial relations of the South at the time. Because he experienced these racial relations firsthand, he was able to use those experiences in his works.

One of his most famous works is Native Son, which is about a young African American who has to run away from the cops because he accidentally kills a white girl. Throughout the novel, the protagonist commits many crimes such as murder, robbery, and rape and is confronted with racism, violence, and debasement. The main theme of the novel is that racial inequality and social injustices affect a person so deep that it is nearly impossible to determine where the expectations of society end and free will begins. Wright's Native Son is a good illustration of the image of the South at the time because it provides the emotional and social issues that African Americans faced in the South.

Another important piece of literature that Wright provides a good image of the South is Black Boy, which is Wright's semi-autobiography which talks about his race relations in the South and his affiliation with the Communist Party after he moved to Chicago. When Wright was a young teenager, his mother became ill, so he took it upon himself to get a job. However, his white employers often treated him really awful due to his race. Because he felt harassed, Wright would quit that job and go to another one, only to find the same type of employers. This book showed how African Americans in the South were treated in terms of their labor. In a way, African Americans still were harassed like slaves even though it was the mid-20th century.