 |
|||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
 |
The Color CurtainWright travelled to the Bandung Conference in Indonesia and developed this text from various interviews and observations that took place before, during, and after the conference. Wright seems to be inspired by, but dubious of, the show of unity among the "colored nations" that the Bandung Conference represented. In the opening pages, Wright observes, "Here were class and racial and religious consciousness on a global scale [...] And what had these nations in common? Nothing, it seemed to me, but what their past relationship to the Western world had made them feel. This meeting of the rejected was in itself a kind of judgment upon that Western world!" [1] What Wright eventually identifies as the strongest forces at the conference race and religion. He writes, "as I sat listening, I began to sense a deep and organic relation here in Bandung between race and religion, two of the most powerful and irrational forces in human nature."[2] Wright was interested in getting his impressions of the conference to the public quickly, because he felt that most "the world's press sabotaged Bandung and did not give the full picture." [3] Harper's rejected the manuscript, prompting Wright to offer it to World, who published it in 1956. Wright, suspicious of his contemporaries at home, specifically requested that James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Horace Cayton, among others, not be sent galleys for review. [4] Nevertheless, the book received generally favorable reviews, and was seen as valuable, although some questioned Wright's emphasis on a racial interpretation of the conference. [5] [1] Wright, Richard. The Color Curtain. Jackson, MS: University
Press of Mississippi, 1994: 12. |