Books by Richard Wright Uncle Tom’s Children Native Son 12 Million Black Voices Black Boy The Outsider Savage Holiday Black Power The Color Curtain Pagan Spain White Man, Listen! The Long Dream Eight Men Lawd Today Richard Wright Reader American Hunger Rite of Passage Copyright © 1998, 2011 by Ellen Wright Acknowledgements, Notes, and Afterword copyright © 1998, 2011 by Yoshinobu Hakutani and Robert L. Tener Introduction copyright © 1998, 2011 by Julia Wright All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018. Arcade Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York,
[email protected] Arcade Publishing® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation. Visit our website at www.arcadepub.com. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file. ISBN: 978-1-61145-349-2 NY 10018 or CONTENTS Introduction by Julia Wright Editors’ Note Haiku This Other World Notes on the Haiku Afterword by Yoshinobu Hakutani and Robert L. Tener Notes INTRODUCTION The haiku you are about to read were written during my father’s French exile, almost forty years ago, throughout the last eighteen months or so of his life. That they should finally be published as Richard Wright wanted them to be read is definitely a literary event and offers some exciting clues to a biographical enigma: how the creator of the inarticulate, frightened, and enraged Bigger Thomas ended up leaving us some of the most tender, unassuming, and gentle lines in African-American poetry. One of my last memories of my father during the summer and autumn months before he died is his crafting of thousands of haiku. He was never without his haiku binder under his arm. He wrote them everywhere, at all hours: in bed as he slowly recovered from a year-long, grueling battle against amebic dysentery; in cafes and restaurants where he counted syllables on napkins; in the country in a writing community owned by French friends, Le Moulin d’Ande. Although he had at last overcome the amoebas, he was often inexplicably exhausted and feverish in those da