Visible Influences of an Invisble Man

Richard Wright in 1928

Richard Wright may have felt invisible in a white-dominated America when he wrote the classic African-American novel The Invisible Man in 1952, but his influence is clearly visible on many young Black writers such as Jabari Amin and Danielle Evans, who came to the Library of Congress today to honor the author on the occasion of what would have been his 98th birthday by reading from both his and their own works and explaining how Wright had affected their writing.

Amin, the author of What Obama Means for Our Culture and The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't and Why, read Wright's short story "Afternoon," a tale of  a few hours in the life of 2 young Black boys, Buster and Riley.

He followed that with a powerful, poignant reading of his own short story, "Genesis," which he said was inspired in part by Wright's tale.

Jabari Amin

 "It was lingering a little in my mind," Amin said, before reading his story of a dramatic afternoon in the lives of 2 friends, Crispus and Roderick. Amin's marvelously crafted tale combines the unlikely elements of a pint of Sealtest chocolate ripple ice cream, baseball card stats about Curt Flood, a neighborhood bully, an unexpected action, and flowing red blood to magnificent effect.  (Note: If you read only 1 short story this year, make it "Genesis." It would rank in the top 10 modern short stories I have encountered.)

For her part, Evans, who is a professor of Literature and Creative Writing at American University, said she felt incredibly fortunate that in her profession she "gets the pleasure of rediscovering Wright every semester."

Danielle Evans

Evans, who won the 2011 PEN Prize for a first book for her short story collection Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, chose to read excerpts from The Invisible Man. She said the novel has had an enormous impact on her.

"I was understood by the book before I understood it," Evans said. "What beautiful language it has. He (Wright) had all the words for the things I'd always known but couldn't name. It takes a 2nd or 3rd or maybe even 4th reading before you see how wonderfully structured it is."

She said she was particularly struck by how Wright  "dares to try to make sense of America" and show how we are "always haunted by the American past and the ways in which we can feel the past in the present."

Evans jokingly said she was using photocopies of the pages of Wright's work because if she brought her tattered, taped copy of  The Invisible Man to the Library of Congress she would "be arrested for book abuse or something." 

She said that she believed reading her own work after reading from Wright's masterwork was like "being after Beyonce in a beauty contest." Evans then proceeded to read from the opening of her new novel in progress which opens with an insightful rumination about railroad cars and then shifts to focus on Phil, a 50ish black man, and his initial encounter with a 20-something young white woman Diana on a sweltering Washington DC afternoon.

After hearing Evan's read from her unpublished work, I can't wait to pick up the novel which features my new home city. Until then, I guess I could wisely spend some of my time re-tackling  Wright's work.

Tales, Tidbits, and Tips
As they plan to do  at each of the Library of Congress' author birthday celebrations (the 1st was for Langston Hughes - for more details on that ceremony see our Feb. 1 posting) Library researchers also presented a variety of Wright-related items from their extensive collections. Among the items  displayed were:

• the original typed manuscript of The Invisible Man
• a neatly written outline on yellow lined over-sized paper for the first 8 chapters of an unpublished novel
• a letter to friend and All the King's Men author Robert Penn Warren which began "We've been thinking along the same channels'
• a letter to author William Faulkner arguing against the release of poet Ezra Pound from jail.