12 Million Black Voices

1941 book by Richard Wright 12 Million Black Voices Front cover with title and authors File:12 Million Black Voices cover.png Front cover of the first edition Richard Wright United States of America English Viking Press October 1941 1023739946 Farm Security Administration (selected by Edwin Rosskam) 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United StatesUrban Joan https://books.google.com/books?id=SdDwdyf7R6kC Richard Wright 1990 Holloway House Publishing 978-0-87067-562-1 123–124 en is a photodocumentary book with text by Richard Wright. The images were taken by the Farm Security Administration and selected by Edwin Rosskam. Viking Press first published the book in 1941, to relatively positive reviews, and it has since been analyzed by various critics. Writing and publication Viking Press approached the author Richard Wright and asked him to write accompanying texts to images taken of Blacks living in poverty by the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression. Various other books with this aim were published in the late 1930s and early 1940s.Leigh, G. 1999, "Imposed integration: Folk identity in 12 Million Black Voices", Rethinking Marxism, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 49.Perry S. Moskowitz The politics of Richard Wright : perspectives on resistance 2018 The University Press of Kentucky Jane Anna Gordon Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh 978-0-8131-7517-1 Lexington, Kentucky Many Dark Mirrors in Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices 1061860449 Wright likely sought to represent many Black people in the United States, as evidenced by the title referencing 12 Million Black Voices. Wright researched his text primarily from Horace R. Cayton Jr.'s files in Chicago.Wright Fabre 1997 144–145 The first draft of the book was handwritten and he then typed it, revising it several times. Edwin Rosskam edited and selected the images. Viking published the book in October 1941.Reilly 1978 xvii It was 150 pages when first published. Content The book contains four "sections", "Our Strange Birth," "Inheritors of Slavery," "Death on the City Pavements," and "Men in the Making", which are divided into "scenes". These scenes are in turn composed of "movements". A central portion of the work is its images. The book has various "montages" that Wright used to incorporate other voices into the work, though it is generally written from the first person plural voice. The book chronicles Black life in the United States from their enslavement in the South to the present day (1940s). Wright sought to show all of Black society, leaving out the so-called "Talented Tenth", who were "fleeting exceptions to that vast, tragic school that swims below in the depths, against the current, silently and heavily, struggling against the waves of vicissitudes that spell a common fate". Wright later told Edwin Seaver: I had thought of doing something like the text of 12 Million Black Voices for the past five or six years-hadn't thought of it as a book however. What I wanted to do was make an outline for a series of historical novels telescoping Negro history in terms of the urbanization of a feudal folk. My aim was to try to show in a foreshortened form that the development of Negro life in America parallels the development of all people everywhere.The book has noticeable Marxist content. Wright was a member of the Communist Party of the United States when he wrote it.Brignano Russell C. (Russell Carl) http://archive.org/details/richardwrightint0000brig Richard Wright; an introduction to the man and his works 1970 [Pittsburgh] University of Pittsburgh Press 978-0-8229-3187-4 55 Reception Upon publication the book received mostly positive reviews. Leroy Allen in Social Science wrote that the book as "very remarkable and exceedingly interesting".Allen Leroy 1942 Review of 12 Million Black Voices. A Folk History of the Negro in the United States https://www.jstor.org/stable/41883406 Social Science 17 4 432 41883406 0037-7848 The New York World-Telegram said "The text is far from commonplace," while The New York Times said that "A more eloquent statement of its kind could hardly have been devised." A reviewer in The New York Times deemed the prose "astringent",Meacham William Shands 1941-11-23 The Bitter Saga of the Negro; The Drama of Centuries Compressed Into a Short Book Written in Astringent Prose en-US The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1941/11/23/archives/the-bitter-saga-of-the-negro-the-drama-of-centuries-compressed-into.html 2021-05-05 0362-4331 and Kirkus Reviews called the book "extraordinary".https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/richard-wright/12-million-black-voices/ 12 MILLION BLACK VOICES Kirkus Reviews en A reviewer in The Journal of Southern History felt it would not be well received by historians or social scientists because it presented a one sided story. However, they concluded "it will move the ordinary reader as few books on the Negro in American life have ever moved him." They praised Wright's writing.Thompson Edgar T. 1942 Review of 12 Million Black Voices. A Folk History of the Negro in the United States. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2191991 The Journal of Southern History 8 2 287–288 10.2307/2191991 2191991 0022-4642 2027/wu.89058598434 free subscription Reception was, according to the scholar Jack B. Moore, "unusually complimentary, particularly considering its clearly uncomplimentary portrait of life that white Americans had forced upon black Americans". Moore continued to note that it stands out as "a smashing critical success" when considering how Wright's later works were received.MOORE JACK B. 1989 The Voice in "12 Million Black Voices" https://www.jstor.org/stable/26475148 The Mississippi Quarterly 42 4 415–424 26475148 0026-637X Nicholas Natanson in 1992 wrote that the book had "received some play in the general-circulation press", some of which was characterized by "echoes" of white guilt.Natanson Nicholas https://books.google.com/books?id=ZDXRIaaVtKcC&q=%2212+million+black+voices%22 The Black Image in the New Deal: The Politics of FSA Photography 1992 Univ. of Tennessee Press 978-0-87049-724-7 254–255 en The book was republished in 1988.Nonfiction Book Review: 12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright, Author, Edwin Rosskam, Photographer, David Bradley, Foreword by Thunder's Mouth Press $15.95 (160p) ISBN 978-0-938410-44-7 https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-938410-44-7 2021-05-05 PublishersWeekly.com en Analysis The book has been analyzed by various critics, several of whom have noted its relative lack of attention.Shiffman Dan 2007 Richard Wright's "12 Million Black Voices" and World War II-era Civic Nationalism https://www.jstor.org/stable/40027406 African American Review 41 3 443–458 40027406 1062-4783Cossu-Beaumont Laurence 2014-12-30 Twelve Million Black Voices: Let Us Now Hear Black Voices https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/7232 Transatlantica fr 2 10.4000/transatlantica.7232 1765-2766 freeRoggenkamp, Karen: "Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices: Refiguring the American Jeremiad" The Langston Hughes Review 24-25 [Winter 2010] p.138-149,157 In 1982 John M. Reilly analyzed how the book was written as if it were sermons given by a preacher.Ghasemi Mehdi 2018 An Equation of Collectivity: We + You in Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices https://muse.jhu.edu/article/688064 Mosaic 51 1 71–86 10.1353/mos.2018.0005 165378945 1925-5683 subscription Moore (1989) drew comparisons between the work and documentary films, as it aimed to be an accessible work, specifically referencing The March of Time, The Plow That Broke the Plains, and The River. In 2006, Jeff Allred wrote an essay on the book and its connection to collective identity.Allred J. 2006-09-01 From Eye to We: Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices, Documentary, and Pedagogy https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-literature/article/78/3/549-583/54081 American Literature en 78 3 549–583 10.1215/00029831-2006-025 0002-9831 subscription References Bibliography http://archive.org/details/isbn_9780306807749 Richard Wright reader Wright Ellen Fabre Michel 1997 New York Da Capo Press registration 978-0-306-80774-9 http://archive.org/details/richardwrightcri0000unse_c1r1 Richard Wright : the critical reception 1978 New York B. Franklin registration 978-0-89102-110-0 Reilly John M. Category:1941 books Category:Works by Richard Wright (author) Category:Viking Press books