Course Description
Summary
“As writers we were about as unlike as any two writers could possibly be,” James Baldwin wrote of his early mentor and sometimes rival Richard Wright. “We were linked together, really, because both of us were black.” Now that both writers have been canonized, we can read their major works together, side by side, and identify the resonances and irreconcilable differences that make Black Boy and Go Tell it On the Mountain, Another Country and Native Son, just as memorable for readers in our time as they were when they were published. We’ll survey the careers of both American masters as they quarreled with history and found their own principled solutions to America’s race problem.
