the more than six decades since it appeared, one
of the most widely read and influential works of
African-American cultural criticism. In this essay,
Wright attempts to formalize what he considered
to be the appropriate ideological “perspective”
for African-American literature and to argue that
black creative writing should be accorded a nor-
mative centrality in the lives of African Americans.
Wright bemoans the fact that, for African Ameri-
cans, “the productions of their writers should have
been something of a guide in their daily living is a
matter which seems never to have been raised seri-
ously” (Wright, 37).
In one of the best known and most controver-
sial passages in the essay, Wright asserts that
Generally speaking, Negro writing in the
past has been confined to humble novels,
poems, and plays, prim and decorous
ambassadors who went a-begging to
white America. They entered the Court of
American Public Opinion dressed in the
knee-pants of servility, curtsying to show
that the Negro was not inferior, that he was
human, and that he had a life comparable
to that of other people. For the most part
these artistic ambassadors were received as
though they were French poodles who do
clever tricks (37).Alternatively, Wright argues, “Negro writers
should seek through the medium of their craft to
play as meaningful a role in the affairs of men as do
other professionals” (47–48). Wright provocatively
suggests that it was just such meaningfulness that
African-American literature had failed to achieve
because of the insular and racially compromised
nature of the writings of the HARLEM RENAISSANCE,
or what he slightingly refers to as the “so-called
Harlem school of expression” (47).
Although the Marxist perspective that informs
much of the essay would diminish in the subse-
quent years of Wright’s career as a reflection of his
disillusionment with the Communist Party, the
call for a socially engaged literary practice that this
essay presents would characterize Wright’s work
until his death in 1960.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bigsby, C. W. E. “Richard Wright and His Blueprint
for Negro Writing.” PN Review 19 (1980): 53–55.
Wright, Richard. “Blueprint for Negro Writing.” In
New Challenge 2 (Fall 1937): 53–65. Reprinted in
Richard Wright Reader, edited by Ellen Wright and
Michel Fabre. New York: Harper and Row Pub-
lishers, 1978.
Terry Rowdenblues
Music is a focal point in African-American literary
traditions. The close relationship of music and lit-
erature has its beginning in both West African cul-
tural contexts that made music a part of daily life
and an American tradition of denying enslaved Af-
rican Americans literacy and thus restricting their
exposure to written communication. Within this
artistic and social framework, musical and oral ex-
pressions were the most accessible artistic forms
for enslaved African Americans.
As the blues emerged as an identifiable musi-
cal style around the end of the 19th century, black
communities were struggling to enter the wage
labor force with little, if any, support. Blues began
in the lives of formerly enslaved blacks, most with
experience as agricultural workers, in rural south-
ern portions of the United States. Work songs and
field hollers, with their respective focus on com-
munal and individual voices, were precursors of
this early, mostly unrecorded, rural/folk period.
At its outset, blues emphasized the articulation
of personalized experience, usually using the first
person, for individual or communal benefit. As
recordings and performances took musical art-
ists out of their home communities, the classic/
vaudeville blues period (at its height in the 1920s)
signaled the genre’s inclusion in the mainstream
American music industry. Blues songstresses such
as Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith, and Bessie Smith
were catapulted into fame. Urban blues reflects
the lives of blacks firmly entrenched in industri-
alized post–Great Migration life and relies heav-
ily on electronic instrumentation. Urban blues
dominates the contemporary global music in-60 blues