Black Boy: (American Hunger): a Record of Childhood and Youth - Softcover

Wright, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062421050 ISBN 13: 9780062421050

Publisher: Perennial, 2015

Synopsis

Richard Wright grew up in the woods of Mississippi amid poverty, hunger, fear, and hatred. He lied, stole, and raged at those around him; at six he was a "drunkard," hanging about in taverns. Surly, brutal, cold, suspicious, and self-pitying, he was surrounded on one side by whites who were either indifferent to him, pitying, or cruel, and on the other by blacks who resented anyone trying to rise above the common lot.

Black Boy is Richard Wright's powerful account of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. It is at once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment a poignant and disturbing record of social injustice and human suffering."

About this title

Review:

"Before he was 40, Wright dominated literary America, publishing four books in seven years, each a triumph in its genre. His first novel, Native Son (1940), sold at the rate of 2,000 copies a day, making Wright the first best-selling black writer in the country's history. Black Boy (1945), his memoir of his Southern childhood, was a bigger success, selling more than a half-million copies" (New York Times)

"A compelling indictment of life in the Deep South between the wars" (Daily Telegraph)

"An angry chronicle of a bright black rebel growing up in the Jim Crow southlands: a landmark in the literature of Black America" (The Times)

Book Description:

Richard Wright's memoir of his childhood as a young black boy in the American south of the 1920s and 30s sold more than half a million copies on first publication and is considered a classic of the genre.

About this edition

• Publisher: Perennial
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0062421050
• ISBN 13: 9780062421050
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 438