Anas Ma’ruf’s “Richard Wright in Indonesia” (1955)

In an article published soon after Wright left Indonesia, Anas Ma’ruf reported on discussions that took place between Wright and the audiences he addressed in various venues around Jakarta. The article indicates both that Anas was aware of Wright’s intention to publish an account of his Indonesian travels and that Wright used the occasion of his lectures with his Indonesian audiences to observe Indonesian opinions and reactions. Anas Ma’ruf reports on Wright’s response to a question about African American contributions to American culture and compares Wright’s self-imposed exile to the experiences of a previous generation of African American literary exiles, including Victor Séjour and the writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance, which Anas had learned of from the 1949 anthology The Poetry of the Negro 1746–1949, edited by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps.