Black Boy

Rating:
Summary: Black Boy
Review: I really liked this book. It shows segregation through the eyes of a child and young adult in the 1900s It shows how Richard changes from being a naive child to an intelligent, independent adult. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in civil rights and equality amoung the races.

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece
Review: This is an autobiographical work by African-American writer Richard Wright, encompassing the first two decades of his life, and taking place in the early twentieth century, in that hotbed of racial and social conflict, the American Deep South.

The work is at once fiercely honest, but also lyrical and literate, demonstrating and describing the genesis of Wright's development as a human being and writer. As a boy, Wright keeps his independence and dignity intact despite opposition forces warring against him to try and force him to conform to what the white expectation of the black man's behaviour should be. Literature becomes his salvation. As for so many writers, he finds solace in the writings of the classic authors of the nineteenth century (by sneaking books that would be otherwise inaccessible to him) from the library through a co-operative white friend.

He does not spare the black race any of the same wrath and disappointment that he subjects the white people to as he encounters gross abuse at the hands of his family and those around him who are under the "system", and who try to suppress him and try to coerce him into surrendering his spirit and individuality in the name of conformity and religion out of fear and anxiety. In the end, he leaves the South with a bitter realism which had taken formation over a lifetime of suppression and suffering, and which he would take with him to fuel his creative spirit once settled in the North. He had such mature reflection which developed in spite of those around him who told him that he was immature and wayward.

The only redeeming Southern white characters in the story are those who are ultimately powerless to remedy the situation, such as a former employer (and he had his share of unsympathetic bosses also). This story is still relevant in the twenty first century, because even though the institutional type of racism that was ingrained in Southern ways and thinking is no longer with us in a formal fashion, there is still a strong racial and economic divide now, and in the South there still resides prejudice and bigotry towards those whose views are divergent from their own.

A key point in this book is when a list of topics safe for discussion between the white and black man appears, and perhaps more tellingly, those that were taboo, including white women, the Civil War, attitudes of northerners towards blacks, the Republican party, etc. The list of permitted topics numbers only two - sex and religion, and one gets the sense that those two topics are discussed in the most basic and base fashion. To me, this symbolized the inability and unwillingness of white and black to connect in any meaningful way. A very important passage in this book deals with religious intolerance, and the attitudes of the un-religious, that are feared by the supposedly God-fearing. Those who deviate from the simplistic manner of thinking of Wright's family and his religious circle pose a threat to their very existence.

In the end, this is a brutally honest work, as Wright does not shirk the issues of violence, hate and abuse within his own race, much as he does not forgive the white attitudes that ultimately shaped his own resistance and thinking in such a profound way. He regularly took a stand, regularly bucked the system, and therefore has won his way into affecting the sensibilities and ideas of thinking people everywhere. His words and emotions will resonate with me forever.

Rating:
Summary: Black Boy
Review: This is my favorite book. I was inroduced to during my Junior or maybe Senior year in high school. We only read the firts part of the books, before he get our of the south. After that I had to go to the library and finish the book outside of class. I LOVED IT.

Rating:
Summary: Good autobiography
Review: This is Richard Wright's autobiography, but it reads like a novel. VERY LONG, first of all. But, it deals with the (much-dealt-with) history of discrimination in the South. I think it gets more interesting when he goes to the North and becomes a communist.
If you like "native son" or "invisible man" you'll probably like this. Read those first though.