ABSTRACT
This chapter is a meditation on that, both Wright's perspective – that is, the intellectual climate in which he developed his point of view – and his "perspective" – that is, the set of prescriptions regarding writing and reflexivity outlined in his "Blueprint" essay. Returning the rural South to the fore of public consciousness is a matter of empirical and theoretical necessity. In the last forty years, scholars, especially in the social sciences, have found new interest in the South, especially changes to the demographic landscape of the region's cities. Wright's call for "perspective" is a call for writers to reassess the style and mechanics of their writing. Here, Wright suggests that the aesthetic and flow of writing is as important as its content. When Richard Wright was born, in 1908 to a sharecropper and schoolteacher in Roxie, Mississippi, the rural South was already coming to occupy a central place in social science research.
