Richard Wright, My Writing Teacher

The writer who talks to me the most

(public domain)

The writer, Richard Wright was born September 4, 1908 in Natchez, Mississippi. American literature is so lucky Mr. Wright was born here in America. So I am I. I never met him or anything. He was dead before I was born. When I left college with the plans to write until I was dead, I fell under his literary spell and have never looked back. Yes, I read all kinds of writers but Wright is the one who slapped me to attention and taught me how to tell stories and get deep into the angst of yourself and the world.

When I fell into Wright’s world, I was working right near a library. I was editing a newsletter for a small section of the city’s recreation department. I was writing poetry furiously and short stories and anything else.

I would walk into that library every day just about and read. I wanted to devour all of it especially the writers who were dissidents and who objected to racism and injustice.

The first book I read by Richard Wright was Uncle Tom’s Children. Uncle Tom’s Children is a collection of novellas. I have never read better fiction in my life. To this day, I sometimes just pick it up and start reading. Even a little bit of it takes me into what I know to be is storytelling and how to do it. Wright never had the benefit of any “creative writing” seminars or classes either. He read and he wrote.

The stories in Uncle Tom’s Children are the Jim Crow South raw and uncut. It is African American life in racist America. This is Richard Wright’s autobiography even more so than his celebrated memoir - Black Boy which would come later and then Native Son and then more books of majesty and precision.

Wright was born in Mississippi in white supremacist hell. He knew it. He spilled it out in Uncle Tom’s Children somehow accutately and painfully even though he had been gone from Mississippi by the time he wrote the tales.

His most perfect story, Big Boy Leaves Home is here. It does not get much better than this tale of escape from the most horrific conditions of white supremacy in America.

I have read Uncle Tom’s Children more than ten times. When I am asked for works of fiction to read to understand the short story or fiction, in general, it is always on my suggestion list. Read it, today. Tomorrow. Next week. And do read it.

And then I read Native Son next. I checked it out on another library visit that year. This is Wright’s most well known work according to many. The story of Bigger Thomas. Wright wanted to shake things up but it didn’t happen. He did change American fiction forever.

It is Wright’s protest novel and even today, over 70 years later, it is celebrated. It has been made into a movie several times and it has been examined and dissected like a cadaver. It is said to explain everything about America’s black-white racial paradigm. It probably does.

Eventually, while I worked that job, I read almost everything Richard Wright wrote. I read his autobiography next. Black Boy. Another classic. That book is on the banned list many places now. It is Wright’s life in stark terms.

Next: Twenty Two Million Black Voices, a photo essay collection. More great stuff. I was totally in tune with what he was doing on the page. If I ever became a writer, I would try to write like this I said. I would try to shake things up when I wrote. I would not hide from the battle. I would say what I saw.

I then read, Eight Men, Black Power, and then The Color Curtain. I loved all of them. I read critical writings about Wright. I read the various biographies about Wright, especially the classic by Michel Fabre.

Last year, when Wright’s daughter enabled a lost novel, The Man Who Lived Underground, to be published 70 years after her father’s death, I read that book twice. I highly recommend it. This is Wright when he was on top of his game.

Richard Wright was like us all — imperfect. He lived a faulty life and a dangerous life. His friend Ollie Harrington says his nerve and guts as a dissident writer got him killed. After his death, it was discovered that his quarters were bugged and mostly likely by the American government and another government.

John A. Williams’ novel, The Man Who Cried I Am is an ode to Wright. It is Williams’ best novel. He knew Wright and was in his debt. James Baldwin also owed Wright greatly though he, as a writer should, expressed himself honestly on the page about his mentor. Baldwin did so after Wright died in essays he wrote. They saw fiction differently clearly.

Many other writers — Margaret Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks, and so many others were assisted in their careers by Richard Wright. Wright, of course, left America before he died and never returned. He was laid to rest (his ashes) in France.

Here’s yet another poem I wrote for Wright and I am sure there will be others (maybe a whole collection?):

almos’ a man (for richard wright)

he said to me that wright was a homophobe and that he will
never read him again. those books, he says: native son, black
boy, 22 million black voices, uncle tom’s children, are no longer
credible. they are like a witness in court testifying who has
changed their story so many times they no longer know
their own name.

we all used the “f” word in the alleys. the gay men in
my neighborhood had to learn how to run fast or fight.
when they all began to die from the skinny man’s disease
many said i told you so and something about God. once,
one of my friends got whistled at by a car full of men and
he wanted to go home and get his gun. malcolm x had sex
with a man, someone alleged; people wanted to kill that guy
for writing that.

but he is a strange guy this richard.
he has no friends. no brothers. no sisters.
no children. he is, someone once wrote,
the consummate alien.

in 1940 he landed on a ship in chicago.
he was arrested and jailed. put in solitary.
it has been said he ate beef and vegetables
drank liquor with reds, killed two women in a panic
and hid out in the snow. when he was caught he confessed
and they gave him a huge cell all to himself and allowed
him no visitors, mail, he couldn’t even write letters.

none of this is true. the young writer wanted
a father. richard wanted to forget his life.
he was a dented can of tomatoes.
he had no time for hate though he was told
he should. it might protect him,
like an umbrella
an army helmet
aspirin after work
in the field

and he needs it, most of all;
brooks say he is the before
and after, i am sure he understood,
ollie harrington say, they came for
him like old lem, slowly. john a
say, he is, am, was,
and so he tried, yes, tried, like he
cried every night
and day, and he was all that people
said he was, one of too many
homophobes, but we would be crazy
not to read them books, crazy to forget
why he had to write them.

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Thanks for reading and read some Richard Wright today. Here is his bibliography below: