The pleasure of his company: two new books afford a reappreciation of Richard Wright

'Conversations with Richard Wright, ' a collection of Wright's press and radio interviews, successfully brings out the consistency of his ethical and aesthetic thoughts and explains his concern for the blacks of the US and the problem of bigotry. In the short novel 'Rite of Passage' started in 1945, Wright describes this bigotry against urban blacks and their meaningless existence in new social units. Wright strongly believed that continued oppression would create destructive tendencies and that discrimination hampered the mental faculties of the blacks.