American Hunger

Rating:
Summary: Excellently written, thoroughly human.
Review: I read this book a few years ago after I found out it was the sequel to Black Boy, a book which made a great impression on me. The same superb prose and insight into the human condition I found in Black Boy continued in American Hunger. I'm a black man. One of the things I hate about this present time is that we black folk have become too used to thinking of ourselves in terms of a color. It's as if we are people attached to a color, not human beings who just happen to be black. Unfortunately I think we are perpetuating this problem ourselves more than anyone is foisting it on us. The thing I most admire about the writings of men like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison was their portrayal of the black person as just that - a person. A human being dealing with a dilemma. And since all human beings deal with dilemmas that puts us all in the same boat no matter what our racial background. In American Hunger, Richard Wright shows how a black human being coped with a fundament! al problem - being seen as less than but knowing he was more. And he did it in such a way that any human being can identify with him and learn from his experience. This sort of writing is much needed today when it is assumed that a "black" problem can only be understood by black people, thereby putting them on some alien and unreachable level. Wright shows that we are part of the human family, very understandable and "just plain folks" when you get down to it.