Richard Wright and Black Radical discourse: the advocacy of violence

In a career that spanned a quarter of a century, Richard Wright used literature to struggle for the rights of Africans and Asians and to combat colonialism. Like Franz Fanon, whose thinking Wright’s books overtly influenced, Wright deployed sociological and psychological insights in his fiction to advance the causes of non‐white humanity during the end of the colonial era. But Wright’s great leap in understanding, not withstanding his global fame and notoriety, revolved around his regular use of violence in his fictions as means of enabling his black characters to attain their full humanity. While his thematic obsession with black violence was shocking, Wright never flattered his black audiences; until the end of his life he challenged and criticised the health and value of the black cultural tradition.