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Black Boy by Richard Wright is a Memoir and Semi-Autobiographical Novel!

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all.�� ~ Richard Wright, Black Boy

Richard Wright's frank and raw depiction of racism is seen through his eyes as a young and infinitely curious negro boy growing up in the Jim Crow South. He experiences severe poverty and hunger, and the ever-present threat of violence and abuse from whites, as well as from members of his own family. Discovering a passion for reading in his youth was his salvation.

With dreams of becoming a writer, Wright is convinced his future points North and eventually migrates to Chicago. He is attracted to the ideologies of the Communist Party but becomes disillusioned by its internal challenges. He continues to find solace in his dream of becoming a writer...

Black Boy is a heart-wrenching account of Wright's early life in the South yet the payoff was experiencing how his distinctive writing style held my attention and left me wanting more. Just look at the beautifully poetic quote above as an example. I found this to be an authentic reflection of how he transformed from his youth to adulthood while remaining curious and hungry for answers. Despite leaving public school with a junior high school education to support his mother and brother, his eyes remained on his dream by being relentlessly autodidactic through his love of reading.

This was an immersion read of this Classic using the 15H 28M audiobook, superbly narrated by Peter Francis James, and the Kindle version of the 75th-anniversary edition which also contains a foreword by John Edgar Wideman and an afterword by Malcolm Wright, the author's grandson. There is also an in-depth timeline of Richard Wright's life.

I highly recommend Black Boy as an immersion read to get the full experience of this remarkable Classic!

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