Writing Wright
Author Richard Wright was born in Mississippi on this day in 1908.
A sharecropper's son, Wright became a successful New York author, and later emigrated to France. One of the most significant African American writers of the twentieth century, he focused on themes of racial discrimination and black-white relations. His 1940 novel Native Son, about a southern black man's experiences in Chicago, has been described as a work that "lays bare with a ruthlessness that spares neither race, the lower depths of the human and social relationships of blacks and whites."
Elizabeth Catlett's Singing Head, made of black Mexican marble, evokes Wright's voice and dignity. An African American sculptor and printmaker, Catlett has garnered widespread praise. "Other artists have done justice to black women," says one critic, "but few have had Catlett's consistent grace and her backbone and her sense of love."
Pictured: Elizabeth Catlett, born 1919, Singing Head, 1980, black Mexican marble, 16 x 9 1/2 x 12 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase.
Author Richard Wright was born in Mississippi on this day in 1908.
A sharecropper's son, Wright became a successful New York author, and later emigrated to France. One of the most significant African American writers of the twentieth century, he focused on themes of racial discrimination and black-white relations. His 1940 novel Native Son, about a southern black man's experiences in Chicago, has been described as a work that "lays bare with a ruthlessness that spares neither race, the lower depths of the human and social relationships of blacks and whites."