Black Boy

Richard Wright'spowerful and unforgettable memoir of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. Atonce an unashamed confession and a profound indictment, Black Boy is a poignant record of struggle and endurance-a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time.

When it exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, Black Boy was both praised and condemned. Orville Prescott of the New York Times wrote that “if enough such books are written, if enough millions of people rea...