Richard Wright and the "Daily Worker": A native son's journalistic apprenticeship.
Item
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Title
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Richard Wright and the "Daily Worker": A native son's journalistic apprenticeship.
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Identifier
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AAI9986343
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identifier
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9986343
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Creator
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Jeffries, Dexter.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Neal Tolchin
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Date
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2000
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, American | History, Black | Biography
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Abstract
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Before Richard Wright was a writer of fiction, he was already composing newspaper and magazine articles for various left wing publications during the early 1930's. Being a journalist, practicing the trade of writing and recording events in an objective and methodical manner, is a classical sort of apprenticeship for American writers. Between the years 1936 and 1938 Richard Wright was the Harlem Editor of the Daily Worker. He wrote and edited over two-hundred articles. These articles contain the roots of his fiction. In them one can observe Wright's early fascination with Marxism, the price African Americans paid making a transition from rural to urban life, and the positive capacity for integrating politics and art. This paper will examine those articles, looking for trends and patterns in his writing that would later manifest themselves in his fiction. In addition, it will seek to explore how a fiction writer compromised and mediates reality, if it is too ugly and grotesque to bear. This was the balancing act that confronted Wright on a daily basis, and it obligated him to occasionally reconfigurate reality, which an artist should do but a journalist should avoid. Mediating these antithetical forces was Wright's legacy as a reporter and editor for the Daily Worker.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
