SOURCE: Evans, Dennis F. “The Good Women, Bad Women, Prostitutes and Slaves of Pagan Spain: Richard Wright's Look Beyond the Phallocentric Self.” In Richard Wright's Travel Writings: New Reflections, edited by Virginia Whatley Smith, pp. 165-75. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.

In the following essay, Evans argues that Wright's travel book Pagan Spain offers valuable insights into Richard Wright as a writer and a person through his sympathetic treatment of Spanish women.

I wanted to go to Spain, but something was holding me back. The only thing that stood between me and a Spain that beckoned as much as it repelled was a state of mind.

—Richard Wright, Pagan Spain

Every native feels himself to be more or less a “foreigner” in his “own and proper” place, and that metaphorical value of the word “foreigner” first leads the citizen to a feeling of discomfort as to his sexual...