To commemorate Richard Wright's centennial, scholars from Europe, the United States, and Africa gathered at the University od Beira Interior (UBL), Portugal, at the end of 2008. The present volume gathers tencritical essays and a poem shared at these convivial andthought-provoking international tow-day commemorations. The diversityof approaches to Wright's thought and works which follows is in itself evidence of the profound complexity and high relevance of thisintellectual and artistic production to contemporary literay, political, and social debate, and the farsightedness of hissociopolitical commentary on matters of race has become a kind ofrefrain in Wright scholarship at the onset of the 21st century.
