Advances in the History of Rhetoric Jan 2019 Open Access

Dialoging with Bigger Thomas: A Reception History of Richard Wright’s Native Son

Bryan J. McCann

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay develops a reception history of the Communist Party of the USA’s (CPUSA) responses to Richard Wright’s Native Son. Drawing on what Fiona Paton calls “cultural stylistics,” I argue that the voices residing in Native Son itself participated in the broader interpretive politics surrounding the novel. Specifically, Wright’s primary character, Bigger Thomas, functioned as a disruptive performance of blackness that revealed the limitations of communist orthodoxy for bringing expression to black subjectivity. I conclude by reflecting on the ways cultural stylistics poses salient ethical challenges to all of us who engage in the labor of critique.

Journal
Advances in the History of Rhetoric
Published
2019-01-02
DOI
10.1080/15362426.2019.1569422
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
OA PDF Green
Export
BibTeX RIS

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

References (46) · 4 in this index

  1. Afflerbach (2015)
    Liberalism’s Blind Judgment: Richard Wright’s Native Son and the Politics of Reception
    MFS Modern Fiction Studies  ↗
  2. Bakhtin (1981)
    The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin
  3. Bakhtin (1981)
    The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin
  4. Baldwin, James. “Everybody’s Protest Novel.” Partisan Review, June. 1949, pp. 578–85.
  5. Baldwin, James. . “Many Thousands Gone.” Partisan Review, Nov–Dec. 1951, pp. 665–80.
Show all 46 →
  1. Bialostosky (2016)
    Mikhail Bakhtin: Rhetoric, Poetics, Dialogics, Rhetoricality
  2. Bowman (2000)
    Domestic(Ating) Excess: Women’s Roles in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Its Adaptations
    Text and Performance Quarterly  ↗
  3. Cohn, David L. “The Negro Novel: Richard Wright.” Atlantic Monthly, May. 1940, pp. 659–61.
  4. Davis, Ben, Jr. “Richard Wright’s ‘Native Son’ a Notable Achievement.” Sunday Worker, 14Apr. 1940, pp. 4, 6.
  5. Dolinar (2012)
    The Black Cultural Front: Black Writers and Artists of the Depression Generation
     ↗
  6. “Draft Manifesto of the John Reed Clubs.” New Masses, June. 1932, pp. 3–4.
  7. Eberly (2000)
    Citizen Critics: Literary Public Spheres
  8. Fabre (1978)
    The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright
  9. Fadiman, Clifton. “A Black American Tragedy.” New Yorker, 2Mar. 1940, pp. 52–54.
  10. Felski (2015)
    The Limits of Critique
     ↗
  11. Gates (1988)
    The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism
  12. Goldstein (2007)
    Richard Wright’s Native Son
     ↗
  13. Goltz (2011)
    Text and Performance Quarterly
     ↗
  14. Halasek (1992)
    Starting the dialogue: What can we do about Bakhtin's ambivalence toward rhetoric?
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  15. Haskins et al. (2010)
    Totalitarian Visual “Monologue”: Reading Soviet Posters with Bakhtin
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  16. Jackson, Margaret Wilhelmina . Evolution of the Communist Party’s Position on the American Negro Question. 19…
  17. JanMohamed (2005)
    The Death-Bound Subject: Richard Wrights Archaeology of Death
  18. Jasinski (1997)
    Heteroglossia, polyphony, andthe federalist papers
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  19. Kelley (1990)
    Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression
  20. Lane (2003)
    The Poverty of Context: Historicism and Nonmimetic Fiction
    PMLA  ↗
  21. Mailloux (1998)
    Reception Histories: Rhetoric, Pragmatism, and American Cultural Politics
     ↗
  22. Miller (1986)
    Bigger Thomas’s Quest for Voice and Audience in Richard Wright’s Native Son
    Callaloo  ↗
  23. Morson (1990)
    Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics
     ↗
  24. Moten (2003)
    In the Break: Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition
  25. Mullen (1999)
    Popular Fronts: Chicago and African-American Cultural Politics, 1935-46
  26. Murphy (2001)
    Mikhail Bakhtin and the Rhetorical Tradition
    Quarterly Journal of Speech  ↗
  27. Paton (2000)
    Beyond Bakhtin: Towards a Cultural Stylistics
    College English
  28. Poore, Charles. “Books of the Times.” New York Times, 1Mar. 1940, p. 25.
  29. Robinson (1983)
    Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition
  30. Rowley (2001)
    Richard Wright: Life and Times
  31. Sillen, Samuel. “The Meaning of Bigger Thomas.” New Masses, 30Apr. 1940a, pp. 26–28.
  32. Sillen, Samuel. . “Richard Wright’s ‘Native Son.’” New Masses, 5Mar. 1940b, pp. 24–25.
  33. The Theoretical Defenders of White Chauvinism in the Labor Movement . Communist Party of the United States of…
  34. Wiegman (2012)
    Object Lessons
  35. Wright, Richard. “We of the Streets.” New Masses, 13Apr. 1937, pp. 14–15.
  36. Wright, Richard. . “High Tide in Harlem.” New Masses, 5Jul. 1938, pp. 18–20.
  37. Wright, Richard. . “I Tried to Be a Communist,” part 1. Atlantic Monthly, Aug. 1944, pp. 61–70.
  38. Wright (1961)
    Native Son
  39. Wright (2000)
    A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies
  40. Wright (2006)
    Black Boy (American Hunger): A Record of Childhood and Youth
  41. Wright (2011)
    Call and Response: Key Debates in African American Studies
CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network → Build reading path →