Five Things: Richard Wright s Theatrical Dreams – Chicago Magazine chicagomag.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from chicagomag.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
As people in the United States mark the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution of 1776, People’s World presents the poem, “Let America be America again,” by Langston Hughes (1902-67).
Elaine Chung In July 1941, Richard Wright, then America’s leading Black author, began writing the novel he felt was his masterpiece. Written “at white heat,” as Wright’s close friend, the Harlem Renaissance poet Arna Bontemps, described to Langston Hughes,
The Man Who Lived Underground was drafted in just six frenzied months, with Wright rhapsodizing of the book, “I have never written anything in my life that stemmed more from sheer inspiration.” Wright saw
The Man Who Lived Underground as a creative breakthrough: an allegorical and existential novel that stood in stark contrast to the literary naturalism of his name-making bestseller,