Author Defends Wright’s Later Works

Native Son author Richard Wright’s later works were wrongly ignored, said author Hazel J. Rowley in a speech at the Harvard Law School this past Saturday.

Rowley, who has written what has been called the definitive biography on Wright, argued that Wright’s later works had substantial literary merit, but that their value was overlooked because the tone often expressed in his works clashed with the patriotism espoused during the McCarthy era.

“Richard Wright has been systematically finalized and reduced,” said Rowley, who is also a fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research.

Wright was able to become the most prominent black writer in the world during the 1940s, producing many popular fiction and non-fiction books such as Native Son and Black Boy.

Although he remained a prolific writer, his popularity and reputation suffered when he left America for France in 1947 in an attempt to escape racism, Rowley said.

Many American blacks felt he had abandoned their community and also took issue with how he portrayed it. He was also criticized for marrying a white woman, Rowley said.

Rowley, who grew up in England and Australia but now lives in Cambridge, said she was initially reluctant as a white woman to write about a black man. She said she felt there were many potential hazards involved in doing so, including the question of whether she could understand Wright’s life.

“I felt I shouldn’t be trespassing in black territory,” she said.

Her interests in Wright developed while living in Austin, Texas where she said she saw apartheid in America. She felt there was a need for a more modern biography of his life.

Rowley’s speech was part of the Black Law Students Association weekend-long spring conference.

—Staff writer Zachary Z Norman can be reached at znorman@fas.harvard.edu.