Black Boy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Black Boy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Black Boy is an autobiographical book by Richard Wright. Depicting Wright's life in great detail, the book
tells the story of his troubled youth and race relations in the United States.
Contents
1 Summary
1.1 Significance
1.2 American Hunger
2 Notes
Summary
Wright depicted himself as an outcast growing up in Mississippi with family members who embraced
religion. Being misunderstood and dismissed was common for him in the household. A few of the most
disturbing aspects of his early childhood included him burning down his home accidentally and the hanging
of a stray kitten that his father carelessly instructed him to kill—not to be taken literally, however; Richard's
father just wanted the kitten to be quiet so that he could resume sleep. Richard's hatred for his father led him
to take a more literal interpretation of the command in order to defy him. His plan backfired when his mother
and brother instilled guilt in the young Richard; his mother went as far as telling him to take down the stiff
kitten and give it a proper burial.
Young Richard's father ended up leaving the family for another woman, further aggravating Richard's hatred
for him. Even when Richard's mother was struggling and battling sickness to support him and his brother, he
refused to live with his father and his new wife—offering a more comfortable living situation—on principle.
He described his father as a simple man who had allowed himself to be mentally enslaved; pity was another
potent emotion that Richard expressed regarding his father.
When his mother became too ill to work anymore, the family went to live with Richard's grandmother. While
at first the Seventh-day Adventist woman was happy to see her daughter and grandchildren, and food was
more plentiful than it was before, conditions later changed and Richard found himself drinking water all day
to avoid hunger pangs. He knew that he had to start working at a young age in order to provide for himself,
but his extremely religious grandmother forbade it as it conflicted with her religious views. Richard's obvious
disinterest in church later convinced her that he was a lost soul and she reluctantly allowed him to secure a
job. His lack of religious commitment was noticeable not only to his grandmother but other relatives who had
come to live with them during hard times. His aunt and grandmother marked him "dead" because of his
agnosticism. During these trying times, his mother—too weak to work—became his only ally. His brother
was taken in by relatives as it became clear that Richard's mother had health issues that were not improving:
she could no longer take care of her children, let alone herself.
Richard experienced sporadic schooling throughout his young life due to the constant moving that his family
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did to try to avoid—in vain—constantly looming poverty. He started and stopped school often and soon
realized that with the proper reading materials he could teach himself. Various demeaning jobs—one of
which involved him delivering racist newspapers to the colored community—and family alienation,
accelerated his escape into horror and mystery short stories and novels. He said that as a youth he "could not
read enough of them." This sparked Wright's interest in defining his experience, through writing, as a poor
black boy in a southern state experiencing racial tension. He started writing his own short stories that
frightened his simplistic grandmother who could not understand why her grandson was interested in writing
about mystery and horror. Edgar Allan Poe was very influential to Wright when he started to balance his avid
reading with some writing of his own.
Richard was a fast learner and even though he was not able to go to school the required number of years, he
was promoted to graduation because of his ability and intelligence. The principal even chose him to read a
speech to the graduating class. Richard agreed and wrote a speech for the occasion. When the principal
handed Richard a speech that he had written for him to recite at graduation, Wright refused and was not
permitted to graduate due to his decision that he could not read a degrading speech created by the principal.
Through menial jobs, Richard was eventually able to support his gravely ill mother and his little brother.
Dreams of moving north to escape debilitating conditions in the south had flirted with Wright's thoughts for
years, so he took a chance with raggedy clothing—revealing his true desperation—and knocked at the first
inviting residence he arrived at up north. He was disappointed to find that slave mentality and religious
devotion were not confined to the south. The mother and daughter he briefly moved in with immediately
assumed that he was religious, therefore a good person, and right away wanted him—a complete
stranger—to stay indefinitely and marry the young daughter who Richard pitied as he did his own father for
her simplicity. Here he was an unknown poor boy from the south who just wanted a place to lay his head
until he got on his feet in a new environment, and a mother and daughter—knowing nothing about
him—shallowly conclude that he was good enough to keep, permanently. It was a critical time for Richard as
it marked quite a few beginning and endings in his life: His idealistic view of the north was crumbling in the
face of the simplistic family he moved in with and his disillusionment with the American dream began
(Wright later moved to Paris, France). This disillusionment would be further explored during Wright's
experiences with the Communist Party in American Hunger. However, it marked the beginning of his
writing career in Chicago and independence from a hostile family.
Significance
Richard Wright's experience with racism and poverty was unique in that he was one of the few black
agnostics/atheists known during his prominence (1940s). So his perspective introduced a dissonance within
black communities that had not previously been explored in such detail. In The Souls of Black Folk W.E.B.
DuBois discussed the debilitating nature of black religion, but not in the deeply personalized way that Wright
discussed it.
American Hunger
In 1977, the second half of Wright's autobiography was published posthumously under the title American
Hunger, which deals mainly with Wright's membership and eventual disillusionment with the Communist
Party. Originally, Wright intended to publish both sections as one volume. However, the Book of the Month
Club offered to feature his book — Wright's 1940 novel Native Son was the first Book of the Month Club
selection written by an African-American — if he agreed to end with his train journey to Chicago, omitting
any mention of his difficulties and disappointment in the North. Wright agreed, calling it Black Boy and
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concluding the book on a positive note. Black Boy went on to sell 195,000 retail copies in its first edition and
351,000 copies through the Book-of-the-Month Club.[1]
Notes
1. ^ Mitgang, Herbert. "Books of the Times; An American Master and New Discoveries." The New
York Times 1 January 1992. Accessed on 14 May 2006. [1]
(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CEEDC1331F932A35752C0A964958260) .
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Boy"
Category: 1945 books
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