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Black Boy Thesis

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Recommended: Life of richard wright

David Rosero
Mr. Rodda
Adv. Lit. & Comp.
1/9/2023
MYE Essay
Rough Draft Black Boy, by Richard Wright, is an autobiography about his struggles in the Jim Crow South. Burning his house down when he was four, Wright has always struggled with connecting with family issues. As he grows into adolescence, Wright begins to notice how Black people are treated in all of the areas he has lived in. All of his life, people have told him what they think it means to be “Black” and how he should live his life if he wants to stay alive. Even when he tries his best, Wright cannot seem to fit into the societal norms of a Black person. The original title being, “American Hunger”, Wright is hungry for more than food. He is hungry for his freedom in the North, …show more content…

For example, while living with Granny, she keeps him from working on Saturdays, as well as discouraging him from reading. Wright’s unbelief in religion leads to a disconnect in his family, which forces him to learn things first-hand. In his early childhood, he meets Ella, a schoolteacher who is renting a room in Granny’s home. Living with Ella, Wright is exposed to the world of stories and literature This sparked his burning passion for literature and learning. After granny finds out what Ella has been teaching him, they get in an argument, causing Ella to leave. “I hungered for the sharp, frightening, breathtaking, almost painful excitement that the story had given me, and I vowed that as soon as I was old enough I would buy all the novels there were and read…So profoundly responsive a chord had the tale struck in me that the threats of my mother and grandmother had no effect whatsoever,” (Wright, 40). Wright feels so captivated from the stories he is reading, that he does not care for any consequences from the real world. This early exposure to literature keeps him eager to continue learning about new stories and knowledge. Wright has this same kind of realization again when he borrows a co-worker’s library card. “I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing. It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different,” (Wright, 249). This portrays Wright’s hunger for knowledge and how he satisfies it. He is enthralled by what he learns in these texts, giving him a better understanding of world views and

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