Analysis and Response: Black Boy

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Recommended: Self autobiography

The book Black Boy by Richard Wright is an autobiography set in the Deep South in the early 1900’s. The book starts with Richard being four years old and very mischievous. One day he is playing with fire and accidentally lights the curtains on fire. The house is suddenly in flames and Richard runs out to hide under the burning house. Luckily, his stepfather runs out and finds him before the house collapses.

The next years of his life are spent bouncing around from place to place trying to live a steady life. Unfortunately, his mother becomes ill and life gets even harder. Richard tries to ignore his hunger and make his mothers life easier. Disaster strikes again when one day her sickness took a turn for the worse, she had a paralytic stroke. Richards grandmother and aunts and uncles arrived from all over the United States to help care for his mother.

Just as it looked like she was going to be healthy again she suffered another stroke. His family members discussed what they were going to do and it was decided the boys had to be separated since one house could not afford to take in both children. He was sent to live with his uncle Clark and aunt Jody while his brother went to live with his aunt Maggie. Richard’s life with his aunt and uncle does not go as expected and he soon moves back in with his grandmother and mother.

Wright never was the religious type and despised his family that was very religious. He fought many times with his aunt Jody and grew to despise her. After several years of constant fighting with his family he finally graduates as a valedictorian. He is presented with a speech his principal wrote but he wanted to read his own instead. Everyone told him he was throwing his future away but he did not care, he di...

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...on as he is of age he becomes hungry for sex. When he is an adult he becomes hungry for work. In the end he is again hungry for friendship and even hungrier for writing. Hunger and racism were the most recurring events in this story and made it a great novel.

This book was one of the best autobiographies I have ever read and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in culture. Throughout the whole novel my emotions were evoked and I questioned my ethics. It was the one of the best cultural books I have read second only to Roots, If you want to read a book that is diverse with its culture and will make you feel as if your witnessing each event as it occurs then read Black Boy.

Works Cited

Wright, Richard A.. Black Boy (The Restored Text Established by The Library of America) (Perennial Classics). New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1998. Print.

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