Thoughts x The Blueprint for Negro Literature x Richard Wright

Lately, one of my favorite writers has been Richard Wright.  I really like him because I see a lot of myself in him.  Wright had no formal education growing up.  He simply chose what he would do and did it.  I remember one of the first books that I really got into! Black Boy it was!  My doctor, at the time, took it to have a hard writing surface and never gave it back.  I see now that I've yet to get over that tragedy and still haven't finished that book.  I suppose that I just want it to linger a little longer.  "Wright" now I am reading his essay, Blueprint for Negro Literature, due to the fact that I am really focusing on being a great writer.  I picked this essay to pivot off of because I am a Negro; therefore I write Negro Literature.  It just so happens that this Negro grew up differently and is not just confined to the Negro Culture.  But to keep it real, that is my starting point!  I feel like Wright's perspective in '37 is just as important now as it was then.  I ask myself, "Who my age is really writing for our people!  I mean, hip hop is doing us ok, but where is the literature that addresses real life issues.  There is not much that has changed even though we have a half-Negro president!  Simple issues that were made complex need to be re-simplified. Same ish! Different Toilet!  With this said, I've dropped a link and a few quotes on "perspective" from the Mississippi Native.  Food for Thought!  You do the dishes!


Love, Peace, Literature, Art and Soul.


Mr. Fox

"Perspective is that part of a poem, novel, or play which writers never put directly upon paper, but which is sensed in every line of the work. It is that fixed point in intellectual space where writers stand to view the struggles, hopes, and sufferings of their people."

"Perspective is the frame in which the picture is hung; it is the invisible brake or accelerator upon the tempo of a poem; it is that part of a novel that is remembered long after the story is forgotten."


Perspective for Negro writers will come when they have looked and brooded so hard and long upon the harsh lot of their race and compared it with the hopes and struggles of minority peoples everywhere that the cold facts have begun to tell them something.