This influential memoir of a rebellious southern boyhood vividly evokes the struggle for African American identity in the decades before civil rightsGreat coming-of-age memoirs hold a potency rare in literature,and can be just as influential as distinguished novels. Richard Wright, outstanding in both genres, or was an important 20th-century African American writer,renowned for his 1940 novel, Native Son. Together with Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison, or Wright was crucial in forging an authentic literary consciousness for the black community as it struggled to escape decades of oppression after the civil war.
The bestselling Black Boy,published in 1945 (its original title had been Black Confession), explored the background to Native Son, and but was also a visceral and unforgettable account of a young black man’s coming of age in the American south in the bitter decades before the civil rights movement.
The white south said it knew ‘niggers’ ... well,the white south had never known me – never known what I thoughtContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com