![]() ![]() ![]() The dehumanization of African Americans during slavery had been followed in the long aftermath of the Civil War by their often brutal repression in the South and by conditions of life in many respects equally severe in the nominally integrated North. Wright believed that few Americans, black or white, were prepared to face squarely and honestly the most profound consequences of more than two centuries of the enslavement and segregation of blacks in North America. Native Son was intended to be America’s guide in confronting this danger. As proud, rich, and powerful as America was, Wright insisted, the nation was facing a grave danger, one that would ultimately destroy the United States if its dimensions and devious complexity were not recognized. The sound of the alarm that opens Native Son was Richard Wright’s urgent call in 1940 to America to awaken from its self-induced slumber about the reality of race relations in the nation. ![]() Who, when I was a child at her knee, taught me to revere the fanciful and the imaginative Contents ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |