Excess in the Works of Ann Petry and Richard Wright (NeMLA 2024)
In keeping with NeMLA's theme on “Surplus,” this roundtable will interrogate the works of Richard Wright and Ann Petry and how they have been interpreted as “excessive.” It seeks to examine how their work has been understood as excessively: masculine, feminist, violent, Communist, leftist, assimilationist, naturalist, realist, etc. This roundtable seeks to look at two major African American authors of the twentieth century whose boundary pushing were seen as "excessive."
Abstract: