Black Boy: American Hunger

1945

" I knew that I lived in a country in which the aspirations of black people were limited, marked-off. Yet I felt that I had to go somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive." - Richard Wright

When I picked up the book Black Boy, I already knew the ending. I knew Wright was an accomplished writer with his books sitting on stands next to books by Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Zora Neal Hurston, and Ralph Ellison. This book with his other book, Native Son, are required readings in many high schools across the country. But knowing the ending of this story was not a spoiler.

His story is one of constant struggle, so much so I read it desperately hoping for a positive ending. The first part of the two-part story is told behind the eyes of his childhood, living in Arkansas, Mississippi, and a few other places in the Deep South. From a young boy Wright always stuck out from the children around him. He was considered a devious child who carried trouble everywhere he went. He always asked questions but was always silenced and punished for asking. It was beaten into him that he was a child, one with so little power he shouldn't think to question anything. It was considered disrespectful, but in actuality he was just a curious kid. His idle curiosity led him to many unwanted predicaments. In the first chapter, Wright accidentally burns his house down playing with fire around 4 years old. He and his brother were left unattended with nothing to play with besides their imagination. His punishment, was a beating that left him literally fighting for his life. At six years old Wright became a "drunkard" from roaming the streets with nothing intrigued by his curiosity. Before the age of 10 Wright and his brother moved twice, lived an orphanage, and never knew what a full stomach felt like. His mother’s illness separated him and his bother, leaving Wright in the homes of different family members. At 12 he eventually moved to a town near Jackson Mississippi with his mother, aunt, and grandmother. In this household Wright learned how to dodge a hit or whatever punishment that was coming for him. He was considered a child that could never be saved, a sinner who fancied forbidden worldly things. He got in trouble for nearly everything he did, even if it was honest. He was still bared by poverty and didn't have a year of consistent schooling. Besides his aunt, a school teacher, no one was able to work. His family ate greens and lard for every meal and it was never enough to get them full. He was determined to help their family, by leaving school to get a job. With dismay from his grandmother, he got a job delivering newspapers.

His love of reading began from reading the stories in the newspapers he delivered. Though he didn't read the news in it, he was captivated by the fiction pieces in the back. Inspired he wrote his own, and one was even good enough to get published. This was a light in his dark world that sparked the hope one day becoming a writer.

When he did go to school, he was good at it. He became valedictorian and defiantly wrote his own speech to address his peers and their parents. He was discouraged to do so, but that didn’t bother him because he seemed to never care what people thought. He wanted his words to be his own and his story to be told. He refused to be a pawn someone could direct with their power and influence. As a black boy in this white world, the lack of agency he could assert was difficult for him to grapple with. He learned often the hard way that he could not have a voice or even a dream in the white world.

Though he had to dim his passion for a valid fear of his life, he found a way to foster it. He found someone who lent his library card for him to read, but he couldn't just ask for books for himself. He had to pose as the help that delivered a white man his books. He snuck looks at the paper before people went out on their paper route. Reading was an escape from this harsh reality.

“The plots and stories in the novels did not interest me so much as the point of view revealed. I gave myself over to each novel out of reserve, without trying to criticize it; it was enough for me to see and feel something different. And for me, everything was something different. Reading was like a drug, a dope.” - Chapter 13, Black Boy

Living as a black boy in the white world, he carried such a heavy weight on his shoulders. He writes, "My days and nights were one long, quiet, continuously contained dream of terror, tension, and anxiety. I wondered how long I could bear it.” He, like most Black people around him, walked around with constant fear. Their life could end at a White man or woman’s tongue with nothing to justify it. They had to be subservient to survive, conditioned to believe they should be happy as help to white people. Wright, couldn't live like that. He couldn't make himself a fool, to make a white man laugh. He couldn't dumb himself down to appear simpleminded. He couldn't blindly follow to be lead in to a trap. Instead he courageously became self sufficient to bring himself and his family to a place where he could be tolerated more.

That is why his story is so inspiring to me. He lived a life, I couldn't imagine. He didn't let his dream die to the destructive world around him that constantly discouraged him. When he was knocked down, he picked himself up. He was defiant, courageous, tenacious to the utmost definition of those words. There a fight in him that never surrendered, but fought fervently after every round.