Uncle Tom's Children

Description

'A formidable and lasting contribution to American literature' Chicago Tribune 'Wright's unrelentingly bleak landscape was not merely that of the Deep South, or of Chicago, but that of the world, the human heart' James Baldwin Natural disasters, cold-blooded murders, political agitation - all haunt these dark, dramatic novellas set in an American Deep South still corrupted by its slave-owning past. But at the heart of each are the stories of the men, women and children whose resistance against oppression will come to define their lives. Originally published in 1938, Uncle Tom's Children was Richard Wright's first published work. It would establish his reputation as both a powerful storyteller and a fierce chronicler of racism, violence and oppression in America at the time.

Richard Wright was born near Natchez, Mississippi, in 1908. As a child he lived in Memphis, Tennessee, then in an orphanage, and with various relatives. He left home at fifteen and returned to Memphis for two years to work, and in 1934 went to Chicago, where in 1935 he began to work on the Federal Writers' Project. He published Uncle Tom's Children in 1938 and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the following year. His other titles include his autobiography, Black Boy (1945), and The Outsider (1953). After the war Richard Wright went to live in Paris with his wife and daughters, remaining there until his death in 1960.