Richard Wright: marxism and the petite-bourgeoisie

Richard Wright , 'Blueprint for Negro Writing', New Challenge (Fall 1937), p. 57.

For an example of the continuing confusion surrounding Wright, see Tone Mwenifumbo , 'Richard Wright: Revolutionary or Cynic?', in Africa, An International Business, Economic and Political Monthly, (London , No. 82, June 1978), pp. 107 and 109.

See James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son (New York, 1952 ),

and Nobody Knows My Name (New York, 1961 ).

See also Ellen Wright's accounts of Baldwin and Wright in Faith Berry, 'Portrait of a Man as Outsider', Negro Digest (December 1968), pp. 27-37.

See James Ford , 'The Case of Richard Wright', Daily Worker (5 September 1944).

See Ben Burns , 'They're Not Uncle Tom's Children', The Reporter (Vol. 14, 8 March 1956), pp. 21-3.

See 'Amid the Alien Corn' , unidentified author, Time (17 November 1958), p. 28.

Wright dealt with the CIA's activities in the American black movement and in the black expatriate community in France in two works: his unpublished manuscript, 'Island of Hallucination', and his speech to students and members of the American Church in Paris (8 November 1960), entitled 'The Situation of the Black Artist and Intellectual in the United States'. With respect to the CIA, Wright's comments in his speech have been summarised by Michel Fabre in The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright (New York, 1973), p. 518. For more on Wright and the C1A see Constance Webb, Richard Wright (New York, 1968), pp. 375-7 and 396; and Berry, op. cit.

See Hoyt Fuller's interview with Chester Himes in Black World (Vol. 21, March 1972), p. 93;

Webb , op. cit., pp. 417and 312.

See Berry , op. cit., pp. 34f.

Fabre has included in his biography the following letter which Wright wrote to Margit de Sabloniere on 30 March 1960: 'You must not worry about my being in danger ... I am not exactly unknown here and I have personal friends in the de Gaulle cabinet itself. Of course, I don't want anything to happen to me, but if it does, my friends will know exactly where it comes from. If I tell you these things, it is to let you know what happens. So far as the Americans are concerned, I'm worse than a Communist, for my work falls like a shadow across their policy in Asia and Africa. That's the problem; they've asked me time and again to work for them: but I'd die first ... But they try to divert me with all kinds of foolish tricks.' Fabre op. cit., p. 509.

American Hunger is the title Wright originally suggested (among others) for his unpublished manuscript 'Island of Hallucination'. The material published under the former title is in large measure the parts of Black Boy which Harper expunged from its 1945 edition. Darryl Pinckney would appear to be wrong when he suggests in his review of American Hunger that Wright himself was responsible for the deletion (see 'Richard Wright: the Unnatural History of a Native Son', Village Voice (4 July 1977), p. 80) since Wright had published much of the material in the Atlantic Monthly (September and August, 1944), under the title 'I Tried to be a Communist'.

Robert Bone , The Negro Novel in America ( New Haven, 1965), p. 158.

Ibid., p. 160.

See Bone, op. cit. , and Addison Gayle, Jr. , The Way of the New World (Garden City, 1976) for these characterisations of Wright's work.

For the Gold Coast (now Ghana) see Wright's essay Black Power (New York, 1954).

Fabre , op. cit., p. xviii.

Harold Cruse , The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York), p. 182.

Ibid., p. 188.

Wright , 'Blueprint ... ' op. cit., p. 61.

Wright , quite early on in his Party experience while reflecting on his mother's reaction of horror to communist propaganda, had come to the conclusion that: 'They had a program, an ideal, but they had not yet found a language.' Richard Crossman (ed.), The God That Failed ( New York, 1965), p. 107.

See Michel Fabre , op. cit., pp. 89-200;

and Webb , op. cit., pp. 114-66.

Daniel Aaron , 'Richard Wright and the Communist Party', New Letters (Winter 1971). p. 178.

Crossman , op. cit., pp. 107-8. For some other attempts to deal with the development of thought specific to the working class,

see E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (New York , 1966);

Stanley Feldstein and Lawrence Costello (eds.), The Ordeal of Assimilation (Garden City, 1974); and the special issue,

'The Origins of Left Culture in the US: 1880-1940', Cultural Correspondence/Green Mountain Irregulars (6-7, Spring 1978 ).

Wright , `Blueprint', op. cit., p. 59.

See Alfred Meyer , Leninism (New York , 1971), pp. 40-1;

and Leonard Shapiro , 'Two Years that Shook the World', New York Review of Books (31 March 1977), pp. 3-4.

See Immanuel Geiss , The Pan-African Movement ( London, 1974), pp. 163-75, and p. 213.

Wright , ` Blueprint ...' op. cit., p. 60.

Jean Baudrillard , The Mirror of Production ( St. Louis, 1975).

See Cornelius Castoriadis , 'On the History of the Workers' Movement' , Telos (Winter, 1976-7), pp. 3-42.

Wright , ` Blueprint', op. cit., p. 54.

Ibid., p. 58.

Richard Wright , The Outsider (New York, 1953), pp. 118-9.

See W.E.B. DuBois' Black Reconstruction in American 1860-1880 (New York, 1971).

See Theodore Draper , American Communism and Soviet Russia ( New York, 1960);

Dan Carter , Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (New York, 1969);

and Wilson Record , The Negro and the Communist Party (New York, 1971).

Wright , 'Blueprint ... ', op. cit., pp. 62-3.

See Fabre , op. cit., pp. 365f;

and Webb , op. cit., p. 312.

See Cedric Robinson , 'The Emergent Marxism of Richard Wright's Ideology' Race & Class (Spring 1978), pp. 221-37.

Richard Wright , White Man Listen! (Garden City, 1957), pp. 34-5. For the function of myth,

see Claude Levi-Strauss , 'The Myth of Asdiwal', in Edmund Leach (ed.), The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism (London , 1969).

See Giovanni Piana , 'History and Existence in Husserl's Manuscripts' , Telos (No. 13, Fall 1972), pp. 86-164;

Georg Lukacs , 'On the Responsibility of Intellectuals', Telos (Vol. 2, no. 1, Spring 1969), pp. 123-31;

William Leiss' review essay on Husserl and Paul Piccone's 'Reading the Crisis' , in Telos (No. 8, Summer 1971), pp.110-21 and pp. 121-9, respectively.

Karl Marx , 'Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction' , in Robert Tucker (ed.) The Marx-Engels Reader (New York, 1972), p. 12.

Wright , The Outsider, op. cit., p. 129.

Aaron , op. cit., p. 180.

Wright , The Outsider, op. cit., p. 227.

Ibid., p. 334.

Richard Wright , 'The Voiceless Ones', Saturday Review (16 April 1960), p. 22.

Wright , White Man op. cit., pp. 19-20.

Wright , The Outsider, op. cit., p. 334.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , The Communist Manifesto, in Tucker, op. cit., p. 343.

Wright , The Outsider, op. cit., p. 227.

Marx , The Communist , op. cit., p. 345.

Wright , The Outsider, op. cit., pp. 176-7.