ENGL 350(S) Reading Wright to Morrison*

In this course we will read the works of Richard Wright and Toni Morrison, two of the major figures in African-American literature of the past half century. From very different perspectives, explained only in part by their different historical moments, Wright and Morrison have explored the African-American experience through (mainly) their fictional works-primarily novels-but also through essays and other polemical works. We will read both authors' major novels-Wright's Native Son and Black Boy, and Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise, as well as Wright's provocatively titled stories, Uncle Tom's Children. Given the overtly political nature of Wright's work, we will also read his essays in White Man Listen!, and touch upon some of the writing he did while in self-imposed exile from the American condition in Paris (which was influenced by his association with Jean-Paul Sartre and other members of the Les Temps Moderne group). Similarly, we will read Morrison's essays in Playing in the Dark and look at her recent forays into the public debate with her editing collections of salient matters of 1990s race relations. This course aims to suggest the ways in which Morrison's and Wright's works are in conversation with each other-echoing, amplifying, and illuminating each other's writing. It is also, however, an attempt to show the disjunctures that distinguish the politically strident Wright from the ideologically astute, and frequently loaded, writing of Morrison. To this end we will focus not only on the question of gender, so often neglected in Wright while the black woman's experience is pivotal to Morrison, but also the ways in which their works speak to and engage the complexity of the African-American condition in two discrete, but not necessarily divorced, historical moments. Requirements: two 10- to 12-page papers. Prerequisite: English 101. Enrollment limited to 25.

Hour: FARRED