Black Boy
A Memoir
A controversial, celebrated, and classic text of American autobiography, Black Boy is a subtly crafted narrative of Richard Wright's journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. Enduring poverty, hunger, fear, abuse, and hatred while growing up in Mississippi, Wright was desperate for a different way of life and headed north, eventually coming to Chicago, where he forged a new path and began his career as a writer. At the end of the book, Wright sits pencil in hand, determined to “hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo.”
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February 15, 2022RICHARD WRIGHT, born September 1908, was an African American novelist and short-story writer. He was among the first African American writers to protest white treatment of Black people, most notably in his 1940 novel Native Son and in his 1945 autobiography Black Boy. Wright’s grandparents had been slaves, and Wright grew up in poverty, shifting from one relative to another. He worked a number of jobs and moved around the southern United States before finding critical acclaim with his first collection of short stories, Uncle Tom’s Children, moving to New York City, and eventually settling in Paris as a permanent expatriate. Other writings include The Outsider (1953), The Long Dream (1958), Black Power (1954), and White Man, Listen! (1957). He…
Black Boy
Richard Wright