Margaret Walker

A writer and friend of Richard Wright, Margaret Walker has written a "psychobiography" on Wright entitled Daemonic Genius (New York: Amistad, 1988). She worked with Wright at the Chicago Writers' Project of the WPA in the late thirties.

Brief Excerpt:

"For Wright, a woman was an enemy, who failed to give him love and happiness by frustrating him in his search for meaning and success. These women were all close to him -- in his family, friendships, and marriages. First, there were his mother, aunts, and grandmother, with whom he had great conflict. He had no sisters, but in his random and brief friendships with women he abandoned each one becasue he felt she had failed, betrayed, or abandoned him. In both marriages, he was unable to ameliorate the conflicts, although his marriage to Ellen lasted nearly twenty years. With his first daughter, Julia, he found love and affection and close rapport, but with his second, Rachel, who was so unlike him, he again found frustration. Medusa is a woman, and throughout Wright's life she reappears."

-- Chapter 17: "Medusa Is a Woman," pp. 107-8.

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