SOURCE: D'Itri, Patricia A. “Richard Wright in Chicago: Three Novels that Represent a Black Spokesman's Quest for Self Identity.” Midwestern Miscellany 4 (1976): 26-33.

In the following essay, D'Itri cites Wright's first three novels as examples of works that address the progression of self-awareness in the life of black Americans.

Richard Wright is most widely recognized as a literary spokesman for the alienated Afro-American. His first three novels treat a progression of self awareness in the Black American's stultified existence. Transplanted from the south to Chicago, the culturally deprived male protagonists stand outside the social mainstream and view the world from a repressed and alienated outsider's perspective. Nonetheless, Wright's fictional quest for self identity stands within larger twentieth century American literary traditions. He was strongly influenced by Theodore Dreiser's techniques of realism and naturalism as well as by John Steinbeck's description of the underdog in American society. Within traditional literary...