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 ten critical essays and a poem shared at these convivial and thought-provoking international tow-day commemorations. The diversity of approaches to Wright's thought and works which follows is in itself evidence of the profound complexity and high relevance of this intellectual and artistic production to contemporary literay, political, and social debate, and the farsightedness of his sociopolitical commentary on matters of race has become a kind of refrain in Wright scholarship at the onset of the 21st century.
