Glenda R. Carpio is Professor of African and African American Studies and English at Harvard University, Massachusetts. She is the author of Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery (2008). She coedited African American Literary Studies: New Texts, New Approaches, New Challenges (2011) with Professor Werner Sollors and is currently at work on a book tentatively titled Migrant Aesthetics, a study of contemporary immigrant fiction.

'This is a welcome addition to the scholarship on Wright (1908–60), especially in that it attempts to revise Wright's literary legacy … All the essays are thoughtful and well researched. Two of the more outstanding submissions are Kathryn Roberts's 'Outside Joke: Humorlessness and Masculinity in Richard Wright' and Ernest Julius Mitchell's 'Tenderness in Early Richard Wright'. These essays reframe Wright's intentions and explode long-held myths of his views on gender and sexuality … Highly Recommended' A. S. Newson-Horst, Choice

• Introduction: Richard Wright's art and politics Glenda R. Carpio; Part I. Native Son in Jim Crow America: 1. The literary ecology of Native Son and Black Boy George Hutchinson; 2. Richard Wright's planned incongruity: Black Boy as modern living Jay Garcia; 3. Marxism, communism, and Richard Wright's depression-era work Nathaniel F. Mills; 4. Rhythms of race in Richard Wright's 'Big Boy Leaves Home' Robert B. Stepto; 5. Sincere art and honest science: Richard Wright and the Chicago School of Sociology Gene Andrew Jarrett; 6. Outside joke: humorlessness and masculinity in Richard Wright Kathryn S. Roberts; Part II. I Choose Exile: Wright Abroad: 7. Freedom in a godless and unhappy world: Wright as outsider Tommie Shelby; 8. Richard Wright, Paris Noir, and transatlantic networks: a book history perspective Laurence Cossu-Beaumont; 9. Expatriation in Wright's late fiction Alice Mikal Craven; 10. Richard Wright's globalism Nicholas T. Rinehart; 11. Richard Wright's transnationalism and his unwritten Magnus Opus Stephan Kuhl; 12. Tenderness in early Richard Wright Ernest Julius Mitchell.

Glenda R. Carpio is Professor of African and African American Studies and English at Harvard University, Massachusetts. She is the author of Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery (2008). She coedited African American Literary Studies: New Texts, New Approaches, New Challenges (2011) with Professor Werner Sollors and is currently at work on a book tentatively titled Migrant Aesthetics, a study of contemporary immigrant fiction.

'This is a welcome addition to the scholarship on Wright (1908–60), especially in that it attempts to revise Wright's literary legacy … All the essays are thoughtful and well researched. Two of the more outstanding submissions are Kathryn Roberts's 'Outside Joke: Humorlessness and Masculinity in Richard Wright' and Ernest Julius Mitchell's 'Tenderness in Early Richard Wright'. These essays reframe Wright's intentions and explode long-held myths of his views on gender and sexuality … Highly Recommended' A. S. Newson-Horst, Choice

• Introduction: Richard Wright's art and politics Glenda R. Carpio; Part I. Native Son in Jim Crow America: 1. The literary ecology of Native Son and Black Boy George Hutchinson; 2. Richard Wright's planned incongruity: Black Boy as modern living Jay Garcia; 3. Marxism, communism, and Richard Wright's depression-era work Nathaniel F. Mills; 4. Rhythms of race in Richard Wright's 'Big Boy Leaves Home' Robert B. Stepto; 5. Sincere art and honest science: Richard Wright and the Chicago School of Sociology Gene Andrew Jarrett; 6. Outside joke: humorlessness and masculinity in Richard Wright Kathryn S. Roberts; Part II. I Choose Exile: Wright Abroad: 7. Freedom in a godless and unhappy world: Wright as outsider Tommie Shelby; 8. Richard Wright, Paris Noir, and transatlantic networks: a book history perspective Laurence Cossu-Beaumont; 9. Expatriation in Wright's late fiction Alice Mikal Craven; 10. Richard Wright's globalism Nicholas T. Rinehart; 11. Richard Wright's transnationalism and his unwritten Magnus Opus Stephan Kuhl; 12. Tenderness in early Richard Wright Ernest Julius Mitchell.