ENG 302

Yi Huang
Dr. Young
2/19/2014
Book review: Black Boy
Black boy was an autobiography book which was written by
Richard Wright and introduced his personal life experiences. The book
divided into two parts, southern night and the horror and the glory. The
first part of southern night was written about his childhood times and
young teenager experiences while the second part of horror and the
glory was written about his personal experiences when he left his
hometown and moved to Chicago. The book reflected the confliction
between the black and the white, religion belief and religion negative
and communist believe and communist negative. According to this
book, we can know about the problem of racism was so seriously at
that time. The write did not treat the black as human beings. The black
just can do hard work and they even have no dignity, no integrity and
no chance to study high technology skills. Creating them as a fun toy,
playing joke with them in a vicious way, spoiling their respect as a daily
game part of their life is every common in the blacks life.
When Richard was young, he was so stubborn that he did not
hear others persuasion. Take burning his home as an example, his
young brother exhorted him that he should not burn the straw, or he

will burn the whole broom. However, Richard ignored his brothers
suggestion, keeping on doing what he wanted do. Then, his home was
fired. He was so scared that he hidden in order to avoid his parents to
find out him to scold and striking him. To his surprise, his mother did
not scold him, she just want to make sure that whether her son had
been hurt or not. His parents really loved him at that time.
Nevertheless, one day, his father did not bring food back to home,
ignoring his mother, younger brother and he. Leaving them and living
with other women. He could live with father, who would take care of
him so that he could live in a life that can no longer suffer from hunger.
But he refused it, insisting living with his mother and younger brother.
In order to feed them, his mother went outside to work, working a hard
way but still could not get enough food. Thus, he lived in a hunger life.
Day by day, his mother was gradually become illness and they went
and seek refuge with Richards grandmother. At first, his grandmother
was so glad to see her grandchildren that she applied many foods to
them. With day went by, on one hand, Richard found out that he still
not have enough food. In order not felt much hunger, he drunk as
much water as he could drink. On the other hand, he found out that his
grandmother and his relatives had the religion belief. But he didnt
believe it. Thinking that if the god really exist, why did he did not
appear to save thousands of people, why there was no one ever saw
the angel, why did the god after hearing the pray from the troubled

people but still did not do some response to them so that they could
help them to get rid of the problem. Thus, Richard did not believe that
the god was really existed.
The confliction between religion belief and religion negative
gradually appeared. Richards grandmother did not allow him to work
on Sunday, saying that Sunday was the day for rest and if he worked,
he would obey the willing of the god. Because Richard could not work
on Sunday, he had not got any income to pay for his lunch and buy
new clothes. What he could do was starving and lied to his classmates
and friends he did not feel hungry so that he did not want to eat
sandwich or bread. Day by day, with the eager of earning money,
Richard decided to insist to work and gained money to pay for his daily
bill and wrote down his personal experiences and opinions according to
story to show. This activity made his grandmother felt puzzle, thinking
that whether his grandson had mentality problem or not. Time passed
fast, Richard graduated and had a presentation in front of all the
teachers and graduate students. He refused the presidents speech
and the job which offered by president at the same time. Insisting to
tell the truth his own opinions, as well as own feeling.
After graduating from school, Richard gradually found out that he
could not keep his job for a long time because he could not act in a
polite way to make the white boss liked him. To suffer from many

things, Richard gradually could act in a right way. But he still felt
confuse that why did the black are willing to gain money but abandon
their respect at the same time. By chance, he took part in an
organization which about communist and be a president of the
communist. Richard spent many times and passion on it. Although in
the communist, it seemed like all of them were comrades and they
were equal in the communist. But in fact, it was still unfair. When
Richard went to New York to have a meeting, the Negro were treated in
a distinguish way. He even could not find a place to live, even the hotel
was provided for the Negro. However, the Negro in the communist was
not united. Once when Richard participated the march, his Negro
workmate encouraged him to march, but once he was bullied by Cy
Pettry, no one stood for him and said something for him that included
the black comrades and the white comrades.
In a word, Black Boy is really a good project which showed us a
real black word to us. Basing on Richards personal experience, we can
know that how racism was serious existed at that time and peoples
opinion towards to not only in racism, but also in religion, as well as in
Communist. Richard Wrights fiction is the most powerful that has
emerged to date in black literature (Felgar Perface) Yes, black people
also have the talent in writing books. Besides, his greatness lies not
only in having influenced black literature but also in having been
perhaps the very fast writer to give the write community explanations

and themes that cut through its prejudices and forced it to look at the
reality of black life in America. But the most provoking theme of
Wrights, The secret of race is that there is no secret, has been
persistently resisted. (Felgar Perface) This sentence was really
touched my heart. As we know, some people holds the opinion that
race have its own secret. But actually, it did not have any secret. It is
all the truth. We can not only know it from the photos, history books,
magazines, newspaper but also can know from personal experiences
and the writes experience or their ancestors experiences. What
human being can do is to face the truth and correct the mistakes. As
far as I am concerned, this is one of the reason that why Richard wrote
so many books about the black. In addition, Wrights purposes in
writing the book were three fold. He was first concerned with
describing his own intellectual and emotional growth--- and explaining
how it was that he did not fall into the stereotyped pattern of the
behavioral responses of the southern Negro community. He was also
interested in showing how the caste system literally blights the lives of
the Negro minority. And finally, he wanted to indicate how the system
of race relations in the South brutalizes and dehumanizes the lives of
the white ruling class. (Margolies 17)
To sum up, we can draw a conclusion that Black Boy is a history
educated book which tell us the real accidents during that period.
Helping us to know the background information at that time and let us

feel the emotion of the black. Letting us to know the style of the
southern Negro community and what the community members thought
at that time. His working hard, never give up, insisting, and the
desiring of learning knowledge will encourage our second language
students to keep on studying hard. No matter how hard we suffered, if
we want to do, we can do.