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This chapter takes up the early writing of Richard Wright and Peter Abrahams that starkly traces out the caustic terms of race and place in their formative years. The unmistakable similarities between Wright's and Abrahams' famed autobiographies, Black Boy and Tell Freedom, highlight the significant impact of their respective racial landscapes. The chapter reads both texts for the central role that racialized place played in forming the consciousness of these young men. Moreover, it argues that place also prominently affected the stylistic and aesthetic modes of the two autobiographies. This approach draws attention to rather different locales: for Wright, the American South from which he fled; and for Abrahams, the exilic space of Europe to which he fled. The resonances of their texts result from intersecting, rather than merely parallel, lives. As both writers fled the racism of their native lands, they crossed paths in 1940s Europe, a key locus of black transnational engagement. It was during their short-lived but generative friendship that Abrahams wrote and revised Tell Freedom, a process with which Wright was involved.

This chapter explains game theory from the ground up. It first considers the concepts of choice and preferences before discussing strategic thinking as a combination of several skills. Game theory is built upon rational choice theory, and the chapter uses an example from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park to illustrate first rational choice theory and then game theory. To demonstrate the usefulness of game theory, it uses a simple game-theoretic model to show how Beatrice and Benedick in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Richard and Harrison in Richard Wright's Black Boy, and people revolting against an oppressive regime all face the same situation. Finally, it reviews previous work trying to bring game theory, as well as related concepts such as “theory of mind,” together with the study of literature.

This chapter describes how an anthology of essays by ex-Communists, The God That Failed, presented international audiences with the anticommunist discourse that flourished in the United States. As the only African American contributor, Richard Wright was essential. His literary achievements and his criticism of Communists were cited to discredit the Soviet Union’s propaganda about American racism. Addressing how Wright could be affiliated with the CIA-sponsored Congress for Cultural Freedom’s disavowal of U.S. responsibility for the damaging Cold War world order, the chapter explains that his essay “I Tried to Be a Communist” and the related volume Black Boy could only be presented in concert with The God That Failed after others’ involvement in editing Wright’s work. An extended treatment of the unpublished “I Choose Exile” shows that Ebony magazine’s rejection and then suppression of the piece further denied American public culture Wright’s prescient insight into Red Scare racism.

“Black,” a compelling song from the indie-rock band Okkervil River’s 2005 album Black Sheep Boy, employs extremely dramatic, yet deceptively mutable elements: a kidnapped child who grows into a traumatized woman, an evil father who escapes punishment for his crimes, a hysterical and heartsick lover coercing a recovery. Will Sheff, the band’s singer and chief songwriter, is a complex and distinctive lyricist who incorporates literary techniques and dark cynicism into his songs while keeping them straightforward, accessible, and catchy. This chapter examines “Black,” its lyrics, and River’s music to highlight issues of agency, omission, and unreliable narration.

This chapter turns to the rise and fame of Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks through the genre of autobiography. Wright's Black Boy (American Hunger) and Gwendolyn Brooks' Report From Part One indicate these authors' awareness of spatial realities and how they transformed the city of fact into the city of feeling, into their writing. The chapter details the dialogue between Wright's and Brooks' fiction and their urban surroundings as residents and then as prize-winning authors. Through various literary and sociological projects, Wright and Brooks initiated an investigation of place, coherency, and consciousness in Chicago's flats, alleyways, blocks, and one-room kitchenette apartments.

This chapter focuses on plays written by Georgia Douglas Johnson in the late 1920s as she hosted a literary salon in her Washington, D.C., home. These texts present the black mother/wife, whose existence is shaped by attempts to delay death. In Blue Blood, she prevents the murder of the men in her family by hiding the fact that she has been raped by a powerful white man. In Safe, she becomes desperate to avoid what she believes to be the inevitable fate of her newborn son: humiliating death at the hands of a mob. In Blue-Eyed Black Boy, she protects her adult son, but ultimately her success in stopping the mob underscores her family's vulnerability. In short, Johnson shows that the black mother/wife must forge romantic and parental bonds in a society that allows white men to rape black women and kill black men with impunity.