Richard Wright Criticism: Further Reading

Algeo, Ann M., "Richard Wright's Native Son," in The Courtroom as Forum: Homicide Trials by Dreiser, Wright, Capote, and Mailer, pp. 43-73, New York: Peter Lang, 1996. (Analyzes Book Three of Native Son.)

Butler, Robert, Native Son: The Emergence of a New Black Hero, Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991, 133 p. (Provides a thematic and stylistic analysis of Native Son.)

Butler, Robert, The Critical Response to Richard Wright, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995, 199 p. (Collection of previously published critical essays on Wright's work.)

Davis, Thadious M., "Wright, Faulkner, and Mississippi as Racial Memory," Callaloo 9, no. 3 (summer 1986): 469-78. (Investigates the importance of landscape in the work of Wright and William Faulkner.)

Fabre, Michel, The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright, translated by Isabel Barzun, New York: William Morrow, 1973, 652 p. (Definitive biography.)

Fabre, Michel, The World of Richard Wright, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985, 286 p. (Compilation of Fabre's critical essays on Wright's work.)

Gounard, Jean-François, "Richard Wright," in The Racial Problem in the Works of Richard Wright and James Baldwin, translated by Joseph J. Rodgers, Jr., pp. 3-148, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992. (Study of Wright's literary, philosophical, and journalistic works.)

Kinnamon, Keneth, New Essays on Native Son, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 156 p. (Collection of critical essays.)

Kinnamon, Keneth, and Michel Fabre, Conversations with Richard Wright, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993, 253 p. (Compiles several interviews with Richard Wright.)

Kinnamon, Keneth, Joseph Benson, Michel Fabre, and Craig Werner, A Richard Wright Bibliography: Fifty Years of Criticism and Commentary, 1933-1982, New York: Greenwood Press, 1988, 1983 p. (Primary and secondary bibliography.)

Rampersad, Arnold, Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1995, 211 p. (Assembles seminal critical essays on Wright's work.)

Rowley, Hazel, Richard Wright: The Life and Times, New York: Henry Holt, 2001, 626 p. (Biographical study with selected bibliography.)

Schultz, Elizabeth, "The Power of Blackness: Richard Wright Re-Writes Moby-Dick," African American Review 33, no. 4 (winter 1999): 639-54. (Considers the impact of Melville's Moby-Dick on Native Son.)

Scruggs, Charles W., "Finding Out About This Mencken: The Impact of A Book of Prefaces on Richard Wright," Menckeniana, no. 95 (fall 1985): 1-11. (Considers the influence of H. L. Mencken on Wright's work.)

Shulman, Robert, "Richard Wright's Native Son and the Political Unconscious," in The Power of Political Art: The 1930s Literary Left Reconsidered, pp. 137-80, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. (Explores the political nature of Wright's Native Son.)

Smith, Virginia Whatley, Richard Wright's Travel Writings: New Reflections, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001, 237 p. (Critical essays on Wright's travel writings.)

Walker, Margaret, Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius: A Portrait of the Man, A Critical Look at His Work, New York: Warner Books, 1988, 444 p. (Full-length critical study.)

Watkins, Patricia D., "The Paradoxical Structure of Richard Wright's ‘The Man Who Lived Underground’," Black American Literature Forum 23, no. 4 (winter 1989): 767-83. (Views “The Man Who Lived Underground” as both a naturalistic and existential fable.)

Get Ahead with eNotes