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Bright and Morning Star | Introduction

When Richard Wright wrote ‘‘Bright and Morning Star,’’ he was involved with the Communist Party. His first published stories (a category to which ‘‘Bright and Morning Star’’ belongs) centered on communist themes, such as organizing the working force and fighting for the rights of oppressed people. These first stories most often appeared in leftist periodicals.

At the time of publication of ‘‘Bright and Morning Star,’’ Wright was living in New York and was working as the Harlem editor for the communist newspaper the Daily Worker. ‘‘Bright and Morning Star’’ was first published in 1938 in The Masses, a radical, socialist monthly journal, and was not collected in the original publication of Uncle Tom’s Children. Rather, it was in 1940, when Uncle Tom’s Children was reprinted and expanded, that ‘‘Bright and Morning Star’’ was included in this collection.

Besides being influenced by the philosophy of the Community Party, Wright often made mention, especially during the beginning of his writing career, of Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis, writers who discussed topics such as the debilitating effects of the American class system and the struggles of working-class people, and whose writing styles impressed Wright. Wright admired their straightforward language and their goal to reproduce in their stories a reality that was as close to truth as possible, and he adopted the style to reflect on the absurdities of the oppression of black people.

However, it was not Wright’s writing style that attracted his eventual wide readership. It was his subject matter, which he presented in shocking and realistic detail. When ‘‘Bright and Morning Star’’ was published in the revised edition of Uncle Tom’s Children, Wright was well known because of the commercial success of his novel Native Son. He gained this fame just as the Harlem Renaissance (a name given to an era, vaguely assigned as the 1920s, of a flourishing of African-American arts) was fading. Wright’s work, with its more realistic and angrier tone, is said to have signaled a new period in African-American literature. The new writing was more political than the body of works that had been produced during the Harlem Renaissance. Wright’s books prefigured the beginning of the Black Arts Movement (1950s to 1970s), whose authors included Ralph Ellison (The Invisible Man, 1952) and James Baldwin (Go Tell It on the Mountain, 1953). The overall aim of this group’s literature was to end racism, and the movement has been hailed as one of the more important forces behind the eventual Civil Rights movement. Many authors in this movement were said to have been greatly influenced by Wright’s work.

Bright and Morning Star Summary

Part I
The first part of ‘‘Bright and Morning Star’’ begins with the protagonist, Sue, standing at the window, looking into the rain, wondering when her son Johnny-Boy will come home. He is late, and Sue is worried. She fears for her son because he is involved in organizing his community in order to gain power through the Communist Party. Her son Sug is already in jail for the same practices.

Sue is proud of her sons because they are strong enough to withhold secret information about the members of the Communist Party, even when pain is inflicted upon them by the sheriff and his men. Sue is a descendent of slaves, living in the South where Jim Crow laws prevail, under which blacks are systematically denied civil and political rights and their labor is exploited. Sue lives in poverty and stress. She is fearful of white people because of her own lack of power. Early in her life, Sue turned to Christianity to help ease the horrendous conditions under which she lived. She sought solace in religion, which promised her everlasting reward upon her death. All Sue had to do was make it through this life, avoiding all contamination from sin, and she would go to heaven. This meant that she had to be kind to her aggressors, submissive to their threats and abuses, and humble in her requests.

Sue’s sons, on the other hand, take a different turn in their lives. They discover socialism as de- fined by the Community Party. They believe that they must take their lives into their own hands and fight for what is rightfully theirs. Slowly, Sue has come to understand her sons’ philosophy, although she still holds on to some of her religious beliefs. She also holds onto her fear and mistrust of white people, something that her sons attempt to resolve, because they believe that they need sympathetic white people to help them gain power.

While Sue is jointly involved in reminiscing and worrying about the late arrival of her son Johnny-Boy, she hears footsteps on her front porch. It is the young white girl Reva, who has a crush on Johnny-Boy and who also helps him in his attempts to organize the community. Sue and Reva have a brief conversation in which Reva tells Sue that one of the members of the secret group has told the sheriff about an upcoming meeting. Although Sue is troubled about Johnny-Boy, she does not tell Reva about her concern. She does not want Reva to worry. Sue only tells her that Johnny-Boy is a little late coming home and that maybe Reva should tell her father to get the word out on his own. Reva then leaves, and Sue ponders about the girl, wondering why she is so naive about becoming involved with her son. Interracial marriages or even physical contact between the sexes was not only illegal or forbidden in the South, it could be deadly.

Part II
As the second part opens, Sue hears footsteps in the mud outside her house. She recognizes them as the sounds of her son Johnny-Boy. He enters the house in... » Complete Bright and Morning Star Summary