Richard Wright

His powerful, eloquent work examined the injustices African-Americans face in a white society. He won immediate fame for his first novel, "Native Son" (1940). It tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a young chauffeur whose inarticulate rage over his lot ultimately erupts into violence. "Native Son" was adapted into a... play directed by Orson Welles in 1941, filmed in 1951 with Wright himself playing Bigger, and again in 1986. Wright's other books include "Black Boy" (1945), an autobiography; the novels "The Outsider" (1953) and "The Long Dream" (1958); the story collections "Uncle Tom's Children" (1938) and "Eight Men" (1961); and the philosophical volumes "Black Power" (1954) and "White Man, Listen!" (1957). Richard Nathaniel Wright was born near Natchez, Mississippi. Largely self-educated, he began to write after moving to Chicago around 1927. He was a member of the Communist Party from 1932 to 1944; he later wrote of his disillusionment with that system in "The God That Failed" (1949), a collection of essays by former party members. Wright lived in Paris from 1946 until his death. A second book of memoirs, "American Hunger," was published posthumously in 1977.

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