Killing the documentarian: Richard Wright and documentary modernity

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Date

2012

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Criticism

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https://hdl.handle.net/2022/19967

Abstract

Scenes from Richard Wright's Native Son (1940) could be read as pointed satire of the documentary aesthetic, and easily be taken as Wright's final statement on the 1930s radical documentary. Balthaser argues that 12 Million Black Voices (1941) -- Richard Wright's documentary photo-montage of the Great Migration -- is "not merely the nonfiction companion to Native Son as it was advertised, but rather the culmination of Wright's own contradictory and dialectical concerns with the politics of black representation."

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Keywords

American literature--African American authors--History and criticism., American literature--20th century--History and criticism., Wright, Richard, 1908-1960., Documentary photography, Documentary mass media and the arts

Citation

Balthaser, Benjamin. “Killing the Documentarian: Richard Wright and Documentary Modernity.” Criticism, vol. 55, no. 3, 2013, doi:DOI: 10.13110/criticism.55.3.0357.

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http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol55/iss3/1/

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IUSB Department of English faculty publications and conference presentations