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Rating: 
Summary: A great book to read
Review: Black Boy is a book about Richard Wright's struggles in the south being an african american. Richard Wright tells his story of poverty, disrespect, and his hopes and dreams of going up north. This autobiography simply tells of Richard's hunger for compassion, freedom, and justice. In the SECOND HALF of the book, Richard explains about what the north is like, how different it is compared to the south, and how he adjusts to it. This shows how Richard is not yet enculturated with the north, and its people.
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Summary: A Book to Remember
Review: Black Boy, an autobiography written by Richard Wright, describes what many average African American children faced growing up in the Jim Crow South. Wright described the poverty that he, his friends and family lived through and the agony and dangers they had to face day-to-day. Wright also described the unfair treatment from white people that African Americans had to endure and ignore. He also described how white people treated African Americans as slaves. Wright wrote in excruciating detail bringing to the reader what life was truly like in the South and in the U.S. in the early 1900s.
I enjoyed reading Black Boy since it gave me insight into how African Americans were really treated in the South. The book really showed me the crisis that America was in over racial segregation. Black Boy also described the despicable acts that white people committed on African Americans for pleasure and entertainment. Richard Wright's actions showed me how a person that is always put down can still strive to be the best. Wright never gave up and kept on dreaming about his goals in life. Wright's book really showed the determination that one can have. His actions in life influenced me to never give up and to keep on trying no matter what someone tells me to do. This was a great book and if one wants to understand what things were like for African Americans in the South in the 1900s, they should read it.
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.
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Summary: Richard Wright's autobiography, Black Boy hits hard!
Review: Richard Wright's autobiography, Black Boy, is a hard hitting novel that either stimulates praise or anger from those who read it. He uses his autobiography as a personal and political protest against the psychological mistreatment of young Negroes by both black and white Southern communities. The psychological mistreatment forced on him by blacks was simply in the form of beatings and censure from relatives which were intended to make him submissive and keep him from being lynched. The psychological mistreatment forced on him by whites was simply having to live and adhere to Jim Crow Laws. Some people have asked why would Richard Wright write an autobiography of this nature. His life experiences definitely would not have been as effective in arousing the public's interest written as fiction. I found his autobiography to be tough, warm, funny, and compelling. I have no doubt in my mind that his experiences were as he stated, because as autobiography goes - it just tells it like it is
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Summary: Transcendent effort that will not soon be forgotten
Review: Richard Wright, known primarily as the archetypal author of Native Son, has written his most endearing work (in my opinion) in Black Boy. Although he received financial security and immense critical acclaim upon the advent of Native Son, it was, however, Black Boy that firmly cemented his name amongst the civil rights pioneers of the 1940's.
Is it merely a racial coming of age book? NO. It is, without question, infinitely more than that. It would be doing the book a grave disservice to merely pigeonhole it in that category. Black Boy, whether you want to label it an autobiographical novel or a semi-fictional autobiography, provocatively enthralls and envelops the reader into young Richard's tangled web of racial injustice, coming of age, and more importantly, self-actualization.
As we follow young Richard from his young formative years in rural Mississippi to Memphis to Chicago, we feel as if we grow with him and are rooting for him all the while to succeed and to grow both physically (from his almost constant lack of food) and mentally (his insatiable appetite for knowledge is something we all can learn from).
Although I enjoyed the first 3/4 of the book the most (the ending was somewhat abrupt and the tales of his involvement with the Communist group in Chicago were not as engaging as those in the beginning), I came away both impressed and enlightened from reading this life account of a time and place so vastly different from today's society, yet not as far removed as some would have you think.
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Summary: Wright Auto Bio
Review: The first Wrift book I read was the impressive 'Native Son'. I found Black Boy and read it. It's easy to read and gives you a good insight in how black life in the south was in the 1920. Wright's life as for so many has not been easy: no father, a crippled mother, racism abound. But still he finds time to read books and he reads the classics. Especially Babbit was one of his favorites (and one of mine too). Via Memphis he goes to Chicago were he becomes a more famous writer and starts working/writing for the communist party where he has a lot of trouble as an independant thinker.This book gives a great insight into black life. REal events are interspersed with his thinking about race relations. It is also easy to read and won't take a long time to finish. Definitely worth reading!
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Summary: The Rain Fell but Wright Wrote Truth From His Heart
Review: This book is profound! It projects the life-story of an African American man-child in America during the early Twentieth century. Wright talks so frank and vividly about life as an African American and that of a man-child during a time of racial discord and divisions. Fear is etch upon every page. This book gripped me. It demonstrated such hunger. And assured hunger. Driven by desire. And intellect. Wright etches his a horror story the pages of his first written manuscript, a draft, that he shares with a neighbor female friend. Ahhh what a friend. If only she knew at the time for her light and enthusiasm a purpose was born into Wright.
The thing that caught my eye while reading this book was not about how his life was in the beginning. It was hard. But what really captured me was how he described the writing of his first piece. He describe the glow of the young female neighbors eyes and the amazement and the light that shown when she was so impressed with his written "words". The light that shone in her eyes upon reading something that he made. That he constructed!
From an educator's perspective whenever one can remember vivid details of one's life there's always a certain dividend of time that has been ascertain through trauma. Nevertheless, despite such a traumatic life he did remarkably well with what he had. He wrote. Which to me is a testimony to all and any writer.
Sometimes life can be filled with such an intensity of tragedy and discord that all one can do is promise oneself a memoir of sorts. . . To mark the seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and even years in which one had to endure such dreadful things. Because the rain can fall and is falling so hard in a life that one can nearly drown in their own tears.
Rain did fall in Richard Wright's life but he wrote truth from his heart. . . And thus, the legend.
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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.
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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.
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