|
Abstract
|
Few critics have gone beyond more general discussions of race and racism to discuss
the impact of Jim Crowism on RichardWright’s works. This paper examines the impact
that Jim Crow laws and practices had on Wright’s life and the way he responded to
them in his literature by drawing upon Henry Louis Mencken’s writing style of using
the “words as a weapon.” I conclude that Wright’s decision to deploy fiction to help
stamp out white racism was part of a political response to what he saw as the complex
choices facing African Americans. Wright never ceased to struggle against American
racism. Twice he chose escape as his mode of resistance; once when he fled the South
in his youth, and once when he left America for France. His life and fiction are
expressive of his feelings toward Jim Crowism.
|