Civil Rights By the Riverside
Hey there! Welcome back to my blogging page about African American literature. In this blog, I want to discuss Richard Wright’s “Down By the Riverside”, a powerful story that is part of a collection of novellas called Uncle Tom’s Children. To me, what makes this novella so powerful is Wright’s unique usage of naturalism to protest against the racial segregation of the Jim Crow south. For those unfamiliar, naturalism follows the idea of humans struggling as helpless animals against the surrounding natural environment, which reduces their individual freedom. Oftentimes, humans are portrayed as succumbing to their surroundings, like in Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”. Yeah, generally very pessimistic. Wright adapts this idea a little bit, using it in combination with the environment of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 to turn the flood into a metaphor for the systemic racism in the South. Though in a very harsh and “hopeless” way. Let’s first begi...