Student-written+book+reviews


 * return to main Black Boy page **
 * Mitchell L. Maynard (Writing in Middle & High Schools, Fall 2013, SUNY Potsdam) **

Richard Wright’s Black Boy would be a very useful tool in the secondary social studies classroom. Wright’s work discusses a time period that is often underrepresented in American history classrooms, and it discusses issues that are almost entirely left out of the historical discussion. Whether or not this book was written as well as it was, it would be a useful artifact because it is a primary source from an African American during a time of great oppression and transformation.

Black Boy is a book that focuses on the themes of hunger and racism. These two themes drive Richard Wright’s entire life throughout the course of the book. His hunger manifests in two main forms throughout the book; his simple hunger for food, and his hunger for education and knowledge. Throughout Wright’s childhood, he is constantly wondering about when he is going to get his next meal, and he is constantly discussing how hungry he is. This leads him to steal and get into trouble in his pursuit to satisfy his hunger. As he gets older and his basic needs for food are fulfilled he begins starving for knowledge. He dives headfirst into his studies, sneaks books from a local library, and becomes the valedictorian of his class. This craving for food and education is representative of his struggle to acquire things that he needs to survive as a human being, and something that will help him survive as a member of his race.

The theme of racism is blatant throughout the novel. Wright is constantly dealing with the racial injustices directed at African Americans that pervaded society in the early 20th century. Racism comes in many forms in this book. It is evidenced in very clear ways such as Wright being thrown out of a moving vehicle by angry white people, and more subtle, and possibly more damaging ways as evidenced by Wright’s graduation speech. When Wright was graduating as Valedictorian he earned the right to recite a speech at his graduation. However, his principle wrote a speech for him because “you can’t afford to just say anything before those white people that night.”[1] This attitude infuriated Wright. He was wholly interested in educating himself and graduating, but at the same time he was not willing to recite a speech that was not his own. He decided to forsake the speech given to him and write his own.

The strengths of this book rely primarily on its ability to transport the reader into the mind of an individual living in the South during the first third of the 20th century. I was very impressed with Wright’s ability to separate himself from the experiences that he was relating to the reader. He wrote this book about his own life experiences, but he did it in an unattached, and almost emotionless way. He did not try to glorify himself, and he made himself a very imperfect character. His murdering of a kitten to spite his father, and lighting his house on fire, just to see what it looked with were traumatic events. Yet the way that Wright approached them made it seem like he was an outsider, watching events that he had no control over. His persistence when it came to upsetting the status quo was something heroic, yet he did not seek to make himself seem like a hero. His attitude towards education and social betterment is something that is noble, especially considering how frowned upon it was by mainstream society at the time.

As a teacher in a secondary social-studies classroom I would use this book as a primary source from somebody who lived in this era. I would give students excerpts from the novel including his discussions with Griggs. The discussions with Griggs are heartbreaking because they show how deep a person’s hatred can go, but due to their circumstances they must bury it. Griggs says “Dick, you must think I’m an Uncle Tom, but I’m not. I hate these white people, hate ‘em with all my heart. But I can’t show it, if I did, they’d kill me.”[2] This passage would be interesting to show to a classroom because it shows that although many African Americans had deep seated hatred towards white people, they were forced to hide it out of fear of reprisal. This could then be linked to the large civil rights movements of the 1950s-1960s, where African Americans were no longer were able to contain their hatred.

Black Boy is a book that should be as successful in a social studies classroom as it is in an ELA classroom. It works as a work of literature, but more importantly for social studies, it serves as an artifact of an era that is underrepresented in high school classrooms. The early 20th century is rarely discussed in regards to the African American experience, although this was a time of great social injustice that helped lead to increased rights for all American citizens. In this way, Black Boy is a book that should be used in a secondary social studies classroom.

[1] Richard Wright, Black Boy. New York: First Perennial Classics, 1998, 175. [2] Wright, Black Boy, 185.


 * Elizabeth Russo **

Richard Wright wrote Black Boy in 1945, an autobiography of the first part of his life. Richard Wright is associated with the Harlem Renaissance period and his autobiography put him to the forefront of minds of literature. The main theme of the book circles around hunger, physical, mental, and emotional. Richard attempts to feed himself, attempts to feed his mind, and feed his heart all throughout his writing, and it shows, every page, every chapter, every letter in every word; Richard’s hunger stands stark and alone.

The book starts off with a bang, with Richard Wright at four years old playing with his younger brother, burning his house down accidentally because he wanted to see what the curtains looked like on fire. “…I was wondering just how the … curtains would look if I lit a bunch of straws and held it under them … then a flare of flames shot out … The fire soared to the ceiling and I trembled with fright … One half the room was now ablaze. Smoke was choking me and the fire was licking at my face, making me gasp.” (pg. 15) Right off the bat I didn’t like the boy Richard. He was cold, and calculating even at a very young age, thirsting for attention but only fearing a beating afterward. If I didn’t know who had written this autobiography I would have guessed that it was written by a serial killer on death row, children just don’t normally think to burn down their houses out of the blue.

His memories a year later didn’t help with my views of him; it just made me consider him even more a sociopath. He and his brother led a kitten home and played with it while their father slept from a hard day’s work. After their father was woken by its crying he had told them to get rid of it. Richard took it upon himself to murder the kitten by hanging it from a rafter. “I found a piece of rope, made a noose, slipped it about the kitten’s neck, pulled it over a nail then jerked the animal clear off the ground. It gasped, slobbered, spun, doubled, clawed at the air frantically; finally its mouth gaped and its pink-white tongue shot out stiffly.” (Pg. 22) He was so pleased with himself, enjoying the fact that he pulled one over on his father.

After both events, (that traumatized me deeply) and convinced me absolutely of his sociopathic tendencies, he was not sorry for what he had done, not sorry for murdering an innocent baby animal, nor sorry for burning down his childhood home; what he was sorry for was getting caught. “Then, just before I was to go to bed, she uttered a paralyzing injunction: she ordered me to go out into the dark, dig a grave, and bury the kitten … I fumbled at the rope and the kitten dropped to the pavement with a thud that echoed in my mind for many days and nights.” (Pg. 23 – 24) Young Richard turned me off to the book; it was very difficult to get back into the book after he begrudgingly buried the kitten on his mother’s orders.

As he was growing I saw his hunger grow, hunger for food after his father abandoned him and his mother struggled to provide for him and his younger brother and, eventually, the beginnings of an everlasting hunger for knowledge that would last with him throughout his days. His mother, a school teacher, was excited when he expressed a desire to learn to read, from that point he was hooked. He learned to count soon after. He began reading everything he could and began applying himself more and more to school.

It wasn’t for another hundred or so pages that I began to get into the book again. Richard’s defiance for authority grew with age, but his hunger also grew. The ultimate turning point in the book for me, as well as Richard’s important turning point in his childhood, was his graduation from ninth grade. As valedictorian he was to give a speech during his graduation ceremony. His principal called him into his office and handed him a pre – written speech to say, instead of the speech Richard had already written. “Listen, boy, you’re going to speak to both white and colored people that night. What can you alone think of saying them? You have no experience…” (Pg. 202) He read his own speech that night to spite everyone, and rushed out before they could congratulate him on a job well done.

Richard Wright’s writing was full of emotion and struck chords with many – a – reader; his first-hand accounts of violence and segregation in the American south emanated emotion. What was different about his writing was how devoid of HIS emotion it was, he seemed to step back from his writing and showed his readers all the horrors that were happening, but his emotion seemed to be missing.