"I Choose Exile" by Richard Wright

"But enough of generalizations; let me glance back and describe the last personal event which resolved me to leave America."

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Sage

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Sage is a wanderlusty futurist who helps aspiring expats overcome their fears of living abroad by providing expert research coupled with real life experience.

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August 2019

As I said on the Travel Through Time Reading Roundup: Richard Wright's voice echoed into the future--even unpublished. Written in 1951, this is the kind of travel writing that comes when you write your truth and follow your sun. It was so raw that Ebony Magazine wouldn't publish it when Wright submitted it. It's a worthwhile read into history.

I Choose Exile

By Richard Wright, 1951

I am a native born American Negro. The first 38 years of my life were spent exclusively on the soil of my native land. But, at the moment of this writing, I live in voluntary exile in France and I like it. There is nothing in the life of America that I miss or yearn for. Barring war or catastrophe, I intend to remain in exile. I shall, of course, keep my American citizenship, my American passport; but I prefer to live out my days among a civilized people.....

Read more in the PDF below or download it here.

"I need freedom. Yes, some people need more freedom than others, and I am one of them. Unless I feel free to let my instincts range, free to come and go as I please, free to probe and examine my environment, I languish, I wither, I die."

― Richard Wright

I Choose Exile, 1951