Overview

When Black Boy first appeared on the literary world in 1945, it was both hailed and despised. If enough such works are written, if enough millions of people read them, the New York Times' Orville Prescott wrote, maybe, someday, in the fullness of time, there may be a broader understanding and a more authentic democracy. Nonetheless, from 1975 to 1978, Black Boy was prohibited in schools across the country for obscenity and instigating racial hatred. The stark cruelty of the Jim Crow South is measured against the sheer desperate determination it took to survive as a Black youngster in Wright's once controversial, now famous autobiography. Wright lied, stole, and screamed at people around him as he grew up in the Mississippi woods, enduring poverty, hunger, dread, abuse, and hatred. He lied, stole, and raged at whites who were apathetic, pitying, or cruel, and Blacks who were angry of anyone trying to rise above their surroundings. He moved north, desperate for a new way of life, finally settling in Chicago, where he established a new route and began his career as a writer. Wright sits poised with pencil in hand at the end of Black Boy, intending to hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo.

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