Man Who Lived Underground eBook

Considered one of the most important African-American authors of the twentieth century, Richard Wright (1908-1960) was a tutelary figure for James Baldwin and influenced writers such as Ralph Ellison and Amiri Baraka. In his life – from his childhood in Mississippi and the poor neighborhoods of Chicago to his consecration as an intellectual and one of the most active voices in the condemnation of racism in the USA – freedom and writing have always gone hand in hand. In his work, the representation of violent figures imprisoned by the racial system was allied to the desire to give voice to the contained anger of blacks, denouncing their dehumanization. He became famous with the publication of the novel Native Son (1940), adapted for the stage by Orson Welles, of Twelve Million Black Voices (1941), compared to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee and Walker Evans, and of the autobiography Black Boy (1945). In 1946, fleeing an openly racist society that denied him the freedom to be and write, he went into exile with his family in Paris.