The Bowie Book Club discussion

Please share with us your thoughts about Black Boy.

I'm re-reading Black Boy. I first read it when I was in high school many, many years ago. I feel like I'm reading it for the first time, with fresh eyes.

Wright brings to me, as a reader, his fears, hopes, and dreams that he had while growing up in the South - be it in Mississippi (where he was born), Arkansas, and Tennessee. He lived with hunger, fears of running afoul of white Southerners (which required that he'd learn fast how to act, think, and be among them -- otherwise, he could end up dead, as had happened with one of his uncles who had a thriving business that whites resented him for), and his own desire to lead a freer, independent existence within the larger society. That is, the U.S. as he knew it to be during the 1910s and 1920s.

I'm now at the part of the book where Wright has at long last arrived in the North. In his own words: "Chicago seemed an unreal city whose mythical houses were built of slabs of black coal wreathed in palls of gray smoke, houses whose foundations were sinking slowly into the dank prairie. Flashes of steam showed intermittently on the wide horizon, ... The din of the city entered my consciousness, entered to remain for years to come. The year was 1927."

I started reading it twenty years ago and never came round to finish it (I don't remember why). Time to pick it up again...

Started it last night. It is so interesting! I'm now in year 1920, Richard Wright is twelve years old. What I like about this book is that he writes his childhood memories with a lot of truthfulness about himself, his family and his surroundings.