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Black Boy

Written by: Richard Wright
Narrated by: Peter Francis James
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Publisher's Summary

Richard Wright's powerful and unforgettable memoir of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. At once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment, Black Boy is a poignant record of struggle and endurance - a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time.

When it exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, Black Boy was both praised and condemned. Orville Prescott of the New York Times wrote that "if enough such books are written, if enough millions of people read them maybe, someday, in the fullness of time, there will be a greater understanding and a more true democracy". Yet from 1975 to 1978, Black Boy was banned in schools throughout the United States for "obscenity" and "instigating hatred between the races".

The once controversial, now classic American autobiography measures the brutality and rawness of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Enduring poverty, hunger, fear, abuse, and hatred while growing up in the woods of Mississippi, Wright lied, stole, and raged at those around him - Whites indifferent, pitying, or cruel, and Blacks resentful of anyone trying to rise above their circumstances. Desperate for a different way of life, he made his way north, eventually arriving in Chicago, where he forged a new path and began his career as a writer. At the end of Black Boy, Wright sits poised with pencil in hand, determined to "hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo". Seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate.

©2009 Richard Wright (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers
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A poignant account of a black experience

Wright’s personal account of his childhood and journey into adulthood is an intelligent yet painful reminder of how stifling black ignorance can be. Like a caged bird he longed to be free. Free to explore and share his ideologies with a world around him that unfortunately just wasn’t ready to receive.

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Better now

I read this as a teenager and enjoyed it and now as an adult I finally understood it a lot better.

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Phenomenal autobiography, writing and narration

This is why Richard Wright is among the greatest writers of all time. The narrator is exceptional and gives even more life to this gripping story.

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