Black Boy: 75th Anniversary Edition - A Timeless Classic Celebrating its Anniversary

Richie Real Estate Broker: I was surprised on how this man's sharing of his boyhood mirrored my own and color had nothing to do with it. Poverty, dysfunctional parents, lack of direction and ignorance is no respecter of persons. I am sure that any boy, young man or mature adult reading this would come away with: I can relate & this happened to me

United States on Nov 29, 2023

Mae B. Haynes: I read this book for the first time when I was eight years old. It had a dynamic effect on me, molding my character for the rest of my life. I ordered it again, seventy nine years later, because I never forgot it, and wondered what effect it would have on an elderly "white" me. The effect was the same. It is my opinion that this book is a must-read, for all human beings ... color, religion, race, any sexual predilections ... this book so clearly brings you deep inside the humiliation, fear, deep longing for equality, Richard Wright so honestly outlines in brilliant prose. I believe it should be required reading in every junior or senior high school.

United States on Aug 31, 2023

Kindle Customer: The reality of post-Reconstruction life is brilliantly depicted in Richard Wright’s memoir Black Boy, with Wright showing the mortal dangers faced by African-Americans and the daily struggles in a society designed to oppress and marginalize; in essence, a hardscrabble reality. Wright’s own personal struggle to find identity and success serve as a microcosm for African-Americans of this period, and sadly, even today. This struggle is reflected in Wright’s continuous questioning of life’s inequalities and injustices and ironically, by people around him questioning why he asks so many questions. This theme is epitomized when Wright’s grandmother tells him, “Quit asking questions and do what you are told” (142). As the novel progresses, Wright does neither, discovering the reality of life in the Jim Crow South and struggling to cope with it.
           
The word hardscrabble seems to fit Wright’s life with its definition, “getting a meager living from poor soil” (“Hardscrabble”). Here, the poor soil symbolizes the Jim Crow South. The Jim Crow laws, written and unwritten restrict African-Americans,...

United States on Jan 27, 2018

thecinnamongirl.blog: The first part of this book, Southern Night, is absolutely incredible: I was absolutely riveted by Wright's profoundly emotional and psychological self-portrait of growing up in the segregated South, made real in visceral, searing prose. At one point, Wright borrows a white co-worker's library card and is thereby able to borrow a book by H. L. Mencken, of which he writes:

"Yes, this man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club. Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for here they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as a weapon? No. It frightened me. I read on and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it."

Wright may have been frightened by Mencken's use of words "as weapons" at that time, but years later, those same words could be used to describe Black Boy -- I was in absolute awe of Wright's courage in writing this book.

In reading Black Boy, I was haunted by a persistent question: "How many others have lived and died like this?" Wright's writing is so powerful, and the protagonist, based on his own life story, is somehow an Everyman; he is unique...

Canada on Jul 12, 2016

Thespionic: This is a very sobering account of what it was like being black (African American) in the American Deep South in the early 1900's. Slavery had been abolished of course, but the South's white supremacists were having none of that, `Jim Crow' laws made sure that the blacks were treated as second class citizens. The South had been used to looking down on the slave, black community, and figured on keeping someone below themselves in social status - for as long as possible!
These Southern whites were some of the most ignorant, intolerant and embarrassingly racist, social thugs in America's whole history. Their own social history shames the American nation and is a stain that will not go away.
I'd like to say that this is now resigned to history, but unfortunately old habits die hard in America, so it's not, race discrimination against African Americans in the States is rife, it's just done in a different way in the twenty first century - incarceration, lack of funding for black education, the recent 'shoot to kill' policy in black areas?
This book is yet another book that relives the White American racist traits. - To Kill a Mocking Bird, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Huckleberry Finn,...

United Kingdom on Jan 21, 2015

Tommaso Coniglio: In reading Richard Wright’s Black Boy, the autobiographical novel of the childhood and youth of the prominent Afro-American author of the first half of the last century, I was struck by the America that was depicted. It is not the American I am so fond of, the America that prides itself in being the land of freedom, hope and opportunity for all; on the contrary, it is an America where racism, discrimination and gross injustice abound, even a century after the end of slavery. I’ve always had some notion of how difficult it would’ve been for blacks to live in a world of segregation and constant humiliation, but Wright’s book made it all come to life in a much more disturbing way. It made me reflect on the psychological damage American society effected on “Negros” from the day they were born: not only poverty, lack of opportunity, indecent living conditions… but sheer helplessness and lack of dignity. Wright makes it clear that blacks were regarded as second class citizens, who had to constantly pay homage to the “superiority” of whites. In this process of perpetual self-degrading, they ended up loosing respect for themselves, as individuals and as a...

United States on Sep 13, 2014

Poignant: Années 1910-1920, sud des Etats-Unis.
Richard, jeune gamin noir, voit sa famille plongée dans la misère suite au départ de son père. Livré à lui-même avec son jeune frère alors que sa mère travaille, il apprend à découvrir le monde impitoyable qui l’entoure.
La faim et le racisme deviennent progressivement l’ordinaire de son enfance dans une société encore gangrenée par l’esclavage, 50 ans après son abolition…

Né en 1908 dans le Mississipi, Richard Wright est le premier auteur noir américain à connaitre le succès en 1940 avec « Un enfant du pays ».
«Black Boy», publié en 1945, est autobiographique et raconte son enfance.
Et ce qui est décrit dans un style énergique et direct, c’est toute l’horreur d’une société pourrie par la haine raciale.
Ce récit au vitriol s’en prend bien sûr aux blancs du Sud. Toutes les variantes du racisme au quotidien sont disséquées au scalpel.
Mais la communauté noire est aussi critiquée pour ses faiblesses, entre l’égoïsme irresponsable des uns (son père qui a lâchement abandonné sa famille), et la bigoterie religieuse extrême des autres (la famille de la mère de...

France on May 04, 2014

J. Willis: Published in 1945, the autobiography of Richard Wright Black Boy was originally going to be told in two parts. The first part chronicled Richards upbringing in Mississippi and his eventual realisation that in order to make something of himself he needed to leave the south. The second part of the book followed Richard in Chicago as he establishes himself as a writer.

Just when Black Boy was going to be published, the book was picked up by the Book of the Month club (which was the equivalent of the Oprah Winfrey book club today.) But the Book Club would only accept the first part of the book and this is how the book was originally published. Today you can buy the full version of Richards life in the south and the north but for some reason my copy only contains the first part of his life in the south.

Born in 1908 I am sure you can imagine the kind of life that a black boy born in Mississippi at that time had.. The book starts in a very dramatic way when Richard accidentally burns down his family home and then we follow his childhood as he deals with his father leaving, poverty, racial hatred and his family forcing their religion on him.

Wright is an...

United Kingdom on Nov 28, 2011

Dodo: Richards Wrights Autobiographie seiner Kindheit und Jugend im US-amerikanischen Süden zur Zeit der Rassentrennung zwischen den zwei Weltkriegen ist eigentlich ein Standardwerk über dem Alltag einer schwarzen Familie zu dieser Zeit. Ohne den Hang zu Kitsch und Pathos wie in "Onkel Toms Hütte" erzählt Wright in einer einfachen, auch in Englisch leicht lesbaren und doch sehr poetischen Sprache von seinen Erinnerungen an das Aufwachsen in einer rein schwarzen Gemeinde, seiner ersten Erkenntnis, dass es auch weiße Menschen gibt und dass diese aus irgendeinem für das Kind zunächst überhaupt nicht nachvollziehbaren Grund den schwarzen Menschen grundsätzlich zu dieser Zeit übergeordnet sind, seinem aus der Furcht vor dem Ku-Klux-Klan aufkeimenden Hass gegen Weiße während der Pubertät und schließlich seiner Erkenntnis als junger Erwachsener, dass nur zwei Dinge ihn aus diesen Lebensumständen befreien können: eine gute Ausbildung und ein Umzug in den Norden der USA. Wright erzählt in Episoden und man merkt, wie nah die Erinnerung bei ihm war, als er die Geschichten niederschrieb. Obwohl manches Geschehene düster ist, wobei Wrights dann oft stoischer Stil das Unfassbare...

Germany on Jun 22, 2010