Big Black Good Man | Short Stories
In the following essay, Hakutani discusses Wright’s short-story collection Eight Men (which contains “Big Black Good Man”) as well as the collection Uncle Tom’s Children and events from Wright’s biography.
Richard Wright was a preeminent African-American writer whose influence on the course of American literature has been widely recognized. As Irving Howe has said, “The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever.” The importance of Wright’s works, beginning with Uncle Tom’s Children (1938; enlarged, 1940), comes not so much from his technique and style but from the particular impact his ideas and attitudes have made on American life. His early critics’ consideration was that of race. They were unanimous in the view that if Wright had not been...
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