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36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Autobiography, November 5, 2001
Richard Wright is considered by many to be one of the premier Black American writers of the 20th century. He wrote a long string of books and essays before his death in 1960. Wright even wrote thousands of haiku poems and some plays. His best-known novel is probably "Native Son," a novel that takes a close look at Black America and it's relation to the penal system. Wright overcame huge obstacles to take a place among the great writers of his day, although I suspect he is more appreciated these days, when minority writers are all the rage. This book, aptly subtitled "American Hunger," is Wright's account of his tumultuous upbringing in the Jim Crow American South and his subsequent exodus to Chicago. The "Hunger" refers to both a physical hunger of poverty and a mental hunger for knowledge. Most of the book concentrates on Wright's troubled childhood. His father abandoned the family at a young age, and for most of his youth Wright was bandied about amongst his frail mother, his psycho-religious grandmother, and a string of uncles and aunts. Wright rarely attended school, and when he did, he almost never stayed for more than two years in a row. His main occupation was trying to find work to feed his family and save for his trip to the North. Along the way Wright gives us many interesting stories about his youth and about the American South. Wright drank liquor heavily before he was seven, lived in a whorehouse, and even spent time in an orphanage. Despite all of these obstacles, Wright still managed to teach himself how to read and write. He was reading Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser in a time when to do so could spell disaster for a
Black man. His accounts of the discrimination he encountered while working in the South are pretty disturbing. Wright was threatened with bodily injury, pitted against his fellow Blacks, and forced to run errands for White workers during his lunch hour. Wright really brings home the dehumanization that a system like Jim Crow brings about. Wright himself had a tough time staying out of trouble because it was difficult for him to play "step `n fetchit." Whites seemed to sense his intelligence and most felt threatened by his mental faculties. Wright left the South behind and headed North to what he felt would be a better life. It was, to some extent. It was easier to find work, although prejudice still followed him. Be sure and read about his job at the laboratory. It's a hoot! I can sympathize with him about people stepping on floors while they're being mopped. I've gone through that and felt the same rage Wright did. It was also in the North that Wright began his long dalliance with the Communist Party. This is the best part of the book, in my humble opinion. Wright candidly reveals the failings of Communism. According to Wright, the Communist party spent more time on internal bickering than trying to bring about revolution. There's even an incident where a certified lunatic ends up in a high position in a pro-Communist group. Wright himself suffered endless character assassination because he was an "intellectual," a big no-no in pro-Stalinist Communism. In short, Wright shows us that Communism, when taken from the ideal to reality, is a huge sham. The biggest problem with this book is that it just seems to end with little fanfare. I would have been interested in hearing about Wright's trips to Europe and his stay in France. Still, this is an adequate book that gives a perspective that is often overlooked. I suspect that Wright would not be very impressed with the ghetto culture of today's world. Wright believed that Blacks have to lift themselves up and get out of poverty. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would not be friends of Richard Wright. Overall, this book is well written and contains interesting anecdotes. Recommended.
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25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I Could Thoroughly Relate, December 12, 2000
By A Customer
Like Richard Wright, I spent my teenage years reading only "classic" novels and therefore skipped over "Black Boy", which I assumed wouldn't be substantive enough for my tastes. Now that I've read it years later, I'm regretful that this stunning memoir wasn't a part of my consciousness when I was younger. This is a story of racial dissonance-- and how horrifying it is to see the lengths that whites would go to to abuse and humiliate emancipated blacks!-- but it is also a story of a brilliant young man whose voice crosses racial bounds. I could identify with him completely, and I have little patience with those reviewers who've described him as "whiny" or "negative" or "hateful." I know what it feels like to grow up in a rural town and have people try to break you for having aspirations. I know what it's like to "feel and cultivate feelings" while others strive for "the trivial material prizes of American life," and I know that justifiable distrustfulness and resentment are not to be confused with hate.Most importantly, I know what it feels like to try to escape one's oppressive roots. The pain in this story was so real for me that I cried my way through many, many passages. "Black Boy" should come as a revelation to black persons, white persons (like myself), and anyone who has ever hungered for their life to mean something more.
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34 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Classic That Must be Read, April 8, 2002
In my quest to either reread or read the first time some of the timeless classics by African American writers this year, I tried to avoid reading this one. I just wasn't up to reading about another downtrodden, poverty-stricken, living in the ghetto story. But it is more than that. This masterpiece is a commentary on a way of life in the early part of the 1900s, a life that many African Americans endured and survived coming through victorious. Richard Wright recalls his poverty-stricken childhood, abandoned by a father, and physically abused and misunderstood by the adults in his life. Uncomfortable among his own people, he didn't fit in with the lifestyle of the blacks in his life nor could he abide the Jim Crow shuffling he had to do with whites. He found he could not compromise his values and knew he had to leave the south. The poverty was startling yet he chose to go back to live with his mother and grandmother when he could have stayed with an uncle where there was plenty of food. With only an nine grade education, he was self-taught, reading and disciplining himself to pursue what he wanted most, to write. And write he did. He wrote stories and had them published when he was still in school and when he moved to Chicago he wrote for the Communist Party. With the Party, Wright thought he had found his niche, but again, he was the odd man out never conforming to their ideals. As I read I kept saying, this is enough already. The poverty, the abuse, the Jim Crow and racism was a wearing me down. But this was a man who rose above his circumstances to have a life that was worth pursuing and living. I am intrigued by this man and his life and look forward to reading his most recent biography.
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