Richard Wright and James Baldwin
Course Description
Summary
Everybody’s Protest Novel
“As writers we were about as unlike as any two writers could possible be,” James Baldwin wrote of his early mentor and later rival Richard Wright. “We were linked together, really, because both of us were black.” But while this may have been true in their lifetimes, now that the two writers have been securely 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 indelible for readers in our time as they were when they were first published. We’ll survey the careers of both American masters as they quarreled with history—and with each other, at times—in the search for a transformative understanding of America's obsession with the social construct known as "race."
Learning Outcomes
- Students will read widely and deeply in the canon of both writers, gaining a comprehensive understanding of their thinking about the countries (both the U.S. and France) that helped form their sensibilities.
- Frequent short writing assignments will help students build critical writing skills.
- Students will spend the second half of the term proposing and building a final project with both critical and creative elements.