Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T20:13:01.460Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 4 - Paris and Ailly

from Part I - Life and Career, Times and Places

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2021

Michael Nowlin
Affiliation:
University of Victoria, British Columbia
Get access

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.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Paris and Ailly
  • Edited by Michael Nowlin, University of Victoria, British Columbia
  • Book: Richard Wright in Context
  • Online publication: 08 July 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108773522.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Paris and Ailly
  • Edited by Michael Nowlin, University of Victoria, British Columbia
  • Book: Richard Wright in Context
  • Online publication: 08 July 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108773522.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Paris and Ailly
  • Edited by Michael Nowlin, University of Victoria, British Columbia
  • Book: Richard Wright in Context
  • Online publication: 08 July 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108773522.006
Available formats
×