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The Fight

Richard Nathaniel Wright (September 4, 1908 – November 28, 1960) was an American author of powerful, sometimes controversial novels, short stories and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes. His work helped redefine discussions of race relations in America in the mid-20th century. Wright was born on the Rucker Plantation in Roxie, Mississippi, the first of two sons to Ella Wilson, an elementary schoolteacher, and Nathaniel Wright, an illiterate, alcoholic sharecropper. Wright moved to Chicago in 1927. After finally securing employment as a postal clerk, he read other writers and studied their styles during his time off. In 1912 the family relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, and Nathaniel abandoned the family several months later. Ella had to support herself and her children. In 1914, when Ella became ill, Wright and his brother were sent to Settlement House, a Methodist orphanage.

In 1945 his book "Black Boy" became an instant best-seller upon its publication.Wright's stories published during the 1950s disappointed some critics who said that his move to Europe alienated him from American blacks and separated him from his emotional and psychological roots. Many of Wright's works failed to satisfy the rigid standards of New Criticism as the works of younger black writers gained in popularity. During the 1950s Wright grew more internationalist in outlook. While he accomplished much as an important public literary and political figure with a worldwide reputation, his very creative work did decline.

While interest in Black Boy ebbed during the 1950s, a resurgence of interest in Wright's work occurred in the 1960s with the advent of the militant black consciousness movement. In the judgment of most modern critics, Black Boy remains a vital work of historical, sociological, and literary significance whose seminal portrayal of one black man's search for self-actualization in a racist society made possible the works of such successive writers as James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison.