The success of Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) catapulted him to international success. Native Son has been credited as being one of the first most successful protest novels by in American literary history. The novel immediately became a best seller with over 250, 000 copies of the book sold with the first month of its release.

Beyond Native Son, Wright has an extensive body of work ranging from short stories, poetry, and essays. His autobiography Black Boy also joins the train of autobiographical works by black men (Consider Frederick
Douglass, Booker T. Washington, etc.) that seek to expose and to highlight the tense political, and racial negotiations black men have make when navigating the American social terrain.

For the HBW, Richard Wright has been a major focus. Two summers ago, the HBW hosted a NEH funded institute, “Making the Wright Connection,” where we pushed for more integration of Wright in secondary education. Also, for our literary blog, Wright has been the inspiration for many posts.

Below, I have provided a recap of significant posts on Richard Wright over the past year.

• [March 16, 2011] One Function of Speculation in African American Literary History—By Jerry Ward
• [March 23, 2011] Richard Wright and Philosophy—By Jerry Ward
• [April 20, 2011] The Significance of Early Support For Novelists: Richard Wright & Colson Whitehead—By Howard Rambsy II
• [April 26, 2011] Disrupting and Expanding the Notion of “Self-Taught”—By Kenton Rambsy
• [April 27, 2011] African American Literature and Ecocriticism: Exploring Richard Wright—By Gregory E. Rutledge
• [May 3, 2011] How Richard Wright’s Mother and Grandmother Taught him to Revere the Imaginative—By Kenton Rambsy
• [May 16, 2011] Literary Vantage Points: Multiple Perspectives of Richard Wright
• [May 18, 2011] Entering Another World—By Jerry Ward
• [February 1, 2012] Richard Wright and Short Stories—By Kenton Rambsy 
• [February 10, 2012] Native Son—By Kenton Rambsy
• [February 17, 2012] Richard Wright—By Kenton Rambsy