Quotes from book
The Color Curtain

Name: The Color Curtain
Author: Richard Wright

African-American author Richard Wright's book The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference is based on his impressions and analysis of the postcolonial Asian-African Conference, which was a gathering of representatives from 29 independent Asian and African countries, held in the city of Bandung, Indonesia, April 18–24, 1955. In addition to drawing on its author's experience as a reporter at the conference, The Color Curtain bases its analysis of the postcolonial world on Wright's interactions with several modern Indonesian writers and intellectuals. Since its publication in 1956, Wright's Indonesian travelogue has been a prominent first-hand account of the Bandung Conference.

“I'm an American Negro; as such, I've had a burden of race consciousness. So have these people. I worked in my youth as a common laborer, and I've had a class consciousness. So have these people. I grew up in the Methodist and Seventh Day Adventist churches and I saw and observed religion in my childhood; and these people are religious. I was a member of the Communist Party for twelve years and I know something of the politics and psychology of rebellion…. These emotions are my instruments…. I want to try to use these emotions to try to find out what these people feel and think and why.”

Richard Wright book The Color Curtain

The Color Curtain (1956)

“The despised, the insulted, the hurt, the dispossessed—in short, the underdogs of the human race were meeting. Here were class and racial and religious consciousness on a global scale. Who had thought of organizing such a meeting? 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 the Western world!”

Richard Wright book The Color Curtain

The Color Curtain (1956)