Chapter 4 - Paris and Ailly

Summary

Paris provided Wright with inspiration that could come only from his exiled status there as well as a diversity of contacts, encounters, cultural opportunities and political involvements that could be found nowhere else in the world. From his contacts with Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, André Gide, and Frantz Fanon to his encounters with Chester Himes, James Baldwin, and Martin Luther King, Wright thrived on a dynamic assortment of collaborations. For Wright, his time in Paris (1947 until his death in 1960) and Ailly, a small farming town in East Normandy where Wright had a summer home (1955-1959) were for him instrumental in dealing with the racial terror he experienced in the United States. Paris and Ailly were places that aided his quest for self-discovery and deepened his relations with the global black diaspora. These locations allowed him to further engage with existentialism, Pan-Africanism, and Marxism while he experimented with such narrative modes as travel writing, literary journalism, and haiku. Perhaps most importantly, though, Paris was where Wright’s lifelong racial consciousness and globalist perspective were developed and confirmed.