Meet The Writer

Richard Wright was born on a plantation near NAtchez, Mississippi, on Spetember 4th 1908. His father Nathaniel was an illiterate sharecropper and his mother, Ella Wilson was a well educated school teacher. His father deserted the family in 1914 when Richard was 10 years old and his mother had a paralytic stroke. The family was extremely poor and after a brief education he was forced to seek work inorder to support his mother. Wright worked at a series of menial jobs in Memphis. He wanted to continue his education by using the local library but Jim Crow Laws prevented him from diong so. Wright solved his problem by forging notes and pretending he was collecting books for a white man. During this time he was particularly impressed with the work of M.L Hecken, Theodore Dreiser, and Sinclair Lewis. After passin a civil service examination Wright finds work as a post office clerk. After the wall street crash, and the begining of the depression, Wright lost his job. FOr a period he found employment at the Negro Burial Society but that came to an end in 1931 and he was forced to go on relief. After several temporary jobs the relief found him work with the Federal Writers Project. This enabled him to publish his short stories and essays. For more information and to see the ending of this story go read Richard Wrights lengthy biography.

My Reaction

One thing that spoke to me in Richard Wrights story was that he had to forger notes to get into the library and learn to read. Today people take free education and the opprutunity to learn for granted it goes unappreciated. To know that someone before me with a harder life than myself could still see the brighter things in life and fight for an education. Many teenagers and children have a world of opprutunities and great teachers in front of them and take them for granted ( particularly students at this very school).