Resisting Cultural Hegemony in Wright’s Selected Texts through Identity Revival

Abstract

This study aims to show that the Black African transformative resistance in literature has remained a powerful strategy that helped their literature survive. The study used Bill Ashcroft views to illustrate the process of White hegemony over Blacks. Then, to illustrate each text in the light of the postcolonial theory in order to shed light on how the chosen writer gave evidence to the ongoing hegemony in his texts. The final stage used Bill’s theory to talk about the resistance and anti- hegemony literature of the chosen writer. A lot of studies have been conducted on Black African American Literature but very little dealt with transformative resistance particularly in Richard Wright. This writer grew in immigrant family in America which represents a challenge to him since he faces the dilemma of abandoning his cultural identity through white hegemony into the mainstream dominant American culture and he is often known for promoting hegemony between the Black Americans and white people. However, the current study which reviewed the literature written by Richard Wight has other hidden motives seen in the light of post-colonial theory through the concepts of resistance, hegemony, and hybridity. It investigated how resistance has been passed down from generation to generation through interpolated literature and how his transformative resistance to white hegemony of the Western culture.