The Struggle In Richard Wright's Black Boy

Black Boy, a memoir written by Richard Wright is composed of some of his most important memories from his childhood. From the start, it is evident that Wright struggled through a difficult childhood. He dealt with a great amount with racial discrimination and prejudice because he grew up in the Jim Crow South, yet he also dealt with extreme poverty. When his father left, his mother could barely get food on the table and bounced from job to job. Many times throughout the memoir, Richard’s physical hunger was brought to the attention of the audience, but so was his emotional hunger. Richard’s struggle with emotional hunger made him yearn for what he did not and could not have, specifically, by living in a society where he had to conform and had few rights, he ended up wanting to be different from everyone else and strived to gain the freedom that he did not have. Unfortunately, Richard grew up in a

Richard knew that not much was expected of him: “I knew that I lived in a country in which the aspirations of black people were limited… Yet I felt that I had to go somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive” (169). He knew that blacks were not supposed to do anything extraordinary, but knowing this made him hungry to prove his worth. He felt he could be more than a part of the black population whose “aspirations were limited”; this restriction of his desires made Richard yearn to differ from others and follow his dream of writing. Not only does this show how Richard’s hungers were strengthened when they were suppressed, but it also draws on the conflict of race. Yes,