Richard Wright

In 1939, he got married to Valencia Barnes Meadman, who was a modern-dance teacher of Russian-Jewish descent. The couple had two daughters, Julia and Rachel. After divorcing Valencia, he got married to Ellen Poplar in 1941.

In 1946, he shifted to Paris and became a permanent American expatriate.

In 1957, he was diagnosed with amoebic dysentery.

Richard Nathaniel Wright was born in Plantation, Roxie, Mississippi to Ella Wilson, a school teacher, and Nathaniel Wright, a sharecropper. He was raised mostly by his maternal grandmother in Jackson, Mississippi.

He attended the Smith Robertson junior high school, where he gave the valedictorian speech. He later attended the Lanier High School in Jackson, but had to drop out to earn a living.

Deeply affected by racism all through his younger days, he authored his first story titled ‘The Voodoo of Hell's Half-Acre’, which was published in the Southern Register, a local African newspaper.

In 1927, he moved to Chicago, where he secured a job as a postal clerk and spent his spare reading acclaimed writers and studying their writing styles.

In 1933, he became frustrated with the American capital system, after he lost his postal clerk job and joined the Communist Party, for which he authored many revolutionary poems.

In 1937, he moved to New York to seek better opportunities for his writing career and subsequently wrote for the WPA Writers' Project guidebook to the city, ‘New York Panorama’.

In 1938, his collection of short stories titled ‘Uncle Tom's Children’ was published after which he became financially stable.

In 1940, his novel ‘Native Son’, a story about a 20 year old African-American living in poverty was published by Harper & Brothers.

Published in 1945, ‘Black Boy’, his semi-autobiographical book offered an insight into his childhood, experiences of racism and his eventual move to Chicago.

In 1949, his essay ‘The God that Failed’, which contained a collection of writings from a number of ex-communists, writers and journalists was published.

His novel ‘Native Son’ was included in ‘Time Magazines’ list of ‘100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005’ and The Modern Library placed it at number 20 on its list of the ‘100 best novels of the 20th Century’.

His semi-autobiographical book ‘Black Boy’ was an immediate bestseller and is one of seminal works that has historical, sociological, and literary significance. The book influenced writers like James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison.