Willard Motley

Willard Frances Motley (born July 14, 1909 or 1912 in Chicago , Illinois , † March 4, 1965 in Mexico City ) was an African-American writer .

Life

Willard Motley (1947; Photo: Carl Van Vechten )

After the publication of his first successful and filmed novel, Knock on Any Door , Willard made himself three years younger; in many places his year of birth is given as 1912. His second book wasn't a great success. The politically active communist went into exile in Mexico under the impression of McCarthyism . He later said he lived in Mexico because he felt free there because there is a feeling of freedom there . Coming from a wealthy family, he lived in poverty in Mexico. He integrated himself into Mexican society and avoided other North American communist exiles .

In his novels Motley criticized life in the slums of his native Chicago, their criminalization and the conditions in state educational institutions.

Works

• Knock on Any Door . Appleton Century Crofts, New York 1947.
  • ( Many do not find their way back. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1950).
• We Fished All Night. Appleton Century Crafts, New York 1951
• Let No Man Write My Epitaph . Random House, New York 1958
• Let Noon Be Fair . GP Putnam's Sons, New York 1966
• Jerome Klinkowitz (Editor, Introduction): The Diaries of Willard Motley. (Foreword by Clarence Major). Iowa State University Press, Ames 1979. ISBN 0813801400

Film adaptations

• 1949: Knock on Any Door ( Knock on doors ).
• 1960: Let No Man Write My Epitaph ( The seed breaks open )

Web links

• Literature by and about Willard Motley in the catalog of the German National Library