User:Ftrousdale18/sandbox

Aaryn's Peer Review:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_e7zYaGOvC7zBGbPn_vTorxGNXvGybJZ8CNdw-4gmRI/edit?usp=sharing

Evaluation of Feminist children’s literature


 * Evaluating Content
 * Everything on the page feels relevant and necessary but the section on the “goals of feminist literature” feels entirely subjective and general- can it be assumed that all feminist authors have the same goal?
 * Most of the information comes froms references before 2010, which feels especially dangerous in the case of a topic revolving so strongly around current events.
 * Many of the claims feel biased without proper citation. They aren’t necesarily biased towards a certain opinion but don’t seem to hold the purpose of nuetral informing and they have no proof or evidence to back them.
 * Evaluating Tones
 * The article fails to confront controversy surrounding feminist literature or responses to it.
 * Evaluating Sources
 * Citations are severely lacking, especially in the section “another perspective” which claims vast generalizations with no evidence or sources.
 * Talk Page
 * The talk section is very short with only one comment but similarly agrees that the source is biased and should include more sources from varied people.
 * The top of the article leaves a notice claiming “This article is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic.”
 * This article varies from our class discussions because it is about contentious information in children’s literature but fails to confront the existence or source of controversy in the genre.

Evaluation of Black Boy


 * Evaluating Content
 * Everything on the article feels relevant to the topic, but all of the information feels lacking- should be more substance in the descriptions of the book.
 * The sources are varied in their dates but don't feel obsolete.
 * The content is convoluted and poorly written, diminishing the strength and clarity of the information. I thought information about the censorship with underrepresented and should have had more information than just plot overview, such as information about the author, the historical relevance, or the significance about the censorship debate.
 * Evaluating Tone
 * The tone certainly feels neutral with no significant bias-- feels almost entirely focused on informing rather than swaying or convincing the audience.
 * Should be more views represented showing information beyond the summary of the book.
 * Evaluating Sources
 * The links work and the claims feel adequately supported but there are only 3 sources.
 * Should be a larger breadth of sources
 * Talk Page
 * The talk page is almost entirely inactive, only with considerations about the format of the article
 * This relates to our class discussions as it is a censored book but differs from them as that aspect of the novel is almost entirely overlooked in the article (only one sentence about it)

Evaluation of Drama


 * Evaluating Content
 * Everything feels relevant and important to include but we question the section on "race" as they only pull from one authors article which feels a bit unbalanced.
 * Because the graphic novel is so recent, there is nothing out of date as all sources discussing it have to be post-the publication date.
 * The article should draw from a broader group of sources for the specific sources- pulling one from opinion is a trap for bias. There should also just be more sources and citations in general. There should generally be more information for the claims and summaries made.
 * Evaluating Tone
 * It all feels fairly neutral but because there aren't that many sources used, there isn't enough bias to claim it as completely neutral.
 * The Abate article is definitely overrepresented as it is the only article cited in the conversation about race.
 * Evaluating Sources
 * The link: https://goraina.com/books/drama/ does not work.
 * Many of the sources are from the website http://cbldf.org/ which I question because if they are all published through the same website, they likely have the same publisher and thus the same principles and incentives in the publication-- unbalanced.
 * I found all of the sources to be adequately cited.
 * Talk Page
 * The talk page has a pretty sufficient dialogue, but most of the comments are focused on changes to sentence structures rather than the content included.

Evaluation of A Wrinkle in Time Film


 * Lead Section
 * The lead section is informative but not too deep- provides a thorough summary of the novel
 * Plot Synopsis
 * The plot synopsis feels well laid out, it is formatted with many short paragraphs-- perhaps too many according to the wiki outline but none of it feels superfluous. It feels like dry description without drama, enhancement, or interpretations.
 * Cast
 * The cast list includes a thorough list with not too many but not too few characters but I think the descriptions are lacking a bit. The book contains complex relationships that are barely accounted for in the cast list.
 * Production
 * The production section almost perfectly follows the Wiki outline but I think it may include extra information such as quotes from Oprah Winfrey which feel unnecessary to the direct details.

Evaluation of Ethnic Studies




 * Evaluating Content
 * Everything feels relevant and important to include but the "relationship to other fields" section needs to either be deleted or clarified, the relevance to ethnic studies is not entirely clear in this section
 * Most of the sources are recent (post 2012) and feel relevant-- especially in the sections describing recent political controversies and the Arizona Ban
 * While the content is good and relevant and generally well written/organized the absolute lack of sources diminishes the validity of the article
 * Evaluating Tone
 * The tone feels unbiased and neutral but because many of the claims lack sources, it is not entirely clear if the claims are personal or generally unanimous so there could certainly be an underlying personal opinion or bias driving the writing
 * No sources feel over or underrepresented, but again, many sources are not articulated so it is hard to say but it feels varied in sources/standpoints
 * Evaluating Sources
 * All the links work and feel fair, recent, and valid but an abundant number of claims are not cited so again, it is hard to say what is valid
 * Talk Page
 * This article is a part of many Wikipedia groups, including the WikiProject Ethnic groups, the WikiProject Sociology, and the WikiProject United States, all of the groups gave the article a D-Class rating on the quality scale, defined as "The article is substantial, but is still missing important content or contains much irrelevant material. The article should have some references to reliable sources, but may still have significant problems or require substantial cleanup."
 * I would agree that the article needs substantial work, but almost entirely on the addition of sources, I found the writing and organization to be deserving of a higher grade

= Draft One of Contributions to Black Boy Wikipedia Page =

Lead Section
Black Boy (1945) is a memoir by American author Richard Wright, detailing his youth in the South: Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, and his eventual move to Chicago, where he establishes his writing career and becomes involved with the Communist Party in the United States. 'Black Boy'' gained such high acclaim in the United State’s because of Wright’s honest and profound depiction of racism in America. While the book gained significant recognition, much of the reception throughout and after the publication process was highly controversial.'''

Background
'''Richard Wright’s Black Boy was written in 1943 and published 2 years later (1945) in the early years of his career. Wright wrote Black Boy as a response to the experiences he had growing up as a poor Black boy in America. Given that Black Boy is partially autobiographical, many of the anecdotes stem from real experiences throughout Wright’s childhood. Richard Wright’s family spent much of their life in deep poverty, enduring hunger and illness moving around the country in search of a better life. Wright cites his family and childhood environment as the primary influence in his writing. Specifically, Wright’s family's religious presence throughout his childhood also held a strong influence in both his religious outlook and his writing. Similarly, Wright’s experiences growing up in poverty enduring hunger caused considerable distress that he referenced repeatedly in Black Boy. Most generally, Wright credits his influence of Black Boy back to the racial inequalities he sustained throughout his travels in America. Wright learned the power of reading and writing as a means towards “new ways of looking and seeing” at a young age. When he was seventeen, he left Jackson to find work in Memphis where he became heavily involved in literary groups and publications and expanded on his use of words as the weapon “to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for the life that gnaws in us” that is seen in Black Boy. Wright claims that he chose to write about the experiences referenced in Black Boy in an effort to “look squarely at his life, to build a bridge of words” between him and the world.”'''

Plot Summary
Black Boy (American Hunger) is an autobiography following Richard Wright's childhood and young adulthood. It is split into two sections, "Southern Night" (concerning his childhood in the south) and "The Horror and the Glory" (concerning his early adult years in Chicago).

"Southern Night"[edit]
The book begins with a mischievous four-year-old Wright setting fire to his grandmother's house. Wright is a curious child living in a household of strict, religious women and violent, irresponsible men. He quickly chafes against his surroundings, reading instead of playing with other children, and rejecting the church in favor of agnosticism at a young age. He feels more out of place as he grows older and comes in contact with the Jim Crow racism of the 1920s South. He finds these circumstances generally unjust and fights attempts to quell his intellectual curiosity and potential.

After his father deserts the family, young Wright is shuffled back and forth between his sick mother, his fanatically religious grandmother, and various maternal aunts and uncles. As he ventures into the white world hoping to find jobs, he encounters extreme racism and brutal violence: experiences that stay with him the rest of his life. While Wright is in search for prosperity, his family is starving and suffering amidst severe poverty.

"The Horror and the Glory"[edit]
Given Richard's family's infatuation with the North as a place of opportunity, Richard and his aunt head to Chicago as soon as they have the necessary funds. In order to survive daily life in Chicago, Richard resorts to lying and stealing money.

The youth finds the North less racist than the South and begins understanding American race relations more deeply. He holds many jobs, most of them consisting of menial tasks. He washes floors during the day and reads Proust and medical journals at night. At this time, his family is still suffering in poverty, his mother is disabled by a stroke, and his relatives constantly interrogate him about his atheism and "pointless" reading. He finds a job at the post office, where he meets white men who share his cynical view of the world and religion. They invite him to the John Reed Club, an organization that promotes the arts and social change. He becomes involved with a magazine called Left Front and slowly immerses himself in the writers and artists in the Communist Party.

At first he thinks he will find friends within the party, especially among its black members, but he finds them to be just as timid to change as the southern whites he left behind. The Communists fear those who disagree with their ideas and quickly brand Wright as a "counter-revolutionary" for his tendency to question and speak his mind. When Richard tries to leave the party, he is accused of trying to lead others away from it.

After witnessing the trial of another black Communist for counter-revolutionary activity, Wright decides to abandon the party. He is branded an "enemy" of Communism, and party members threaten him away from various jobs and gatherings. He does not fight them because he believes they are clumsily groping toward ideas that he agrees with: unity, tolerance, and equality. Wright ends the book by resolving to use his writing as a way to start a revolution: asserting that everyone has a "hunger" for life that needs to be filled, and for him, writing is his way to the human heart.

Genre and Style
'''The genre of Richard Wright’s Black Boy is a longstanding controversy because of the ambiguity. Black Boy follows Wright’s childhood with a degree of accuracy that suggests it exists as an autobiography, although Wright never confirmed nor denied whether the book was entirely autobiographical or fictitious. The books apparent tendency to intermix fact and fiction is criticized because of the specific dialogue that suggests a degree of fiction. Additionally, Wright omits certain details of his family's background that would typically be included in an autobiographical novel. While Wright may have deviated from historical truths, the book is accurate in the sense that he rarely deviates from narrative truth in the candidness and rawness of the book.'''

'''The style in Black Boy is so highly regarded because of the candidness that defied social demands at the time of Black Boy’s publication. Wright denies the racially based oppression he endured in his ability to read and write with eloquence and credibility as well as with his courage to speak back against the dominant norms of society holding him back.'''

Analysis
'''Given Black Boy’s emphasis on racial inequality in America, many of the motifs refer to the lingering aspects of slave narratives in current day. These motifs include violence, religion, starvation, familial unity and lack thereof, literacy, and the North Star as a guide towards freedom. The prevalence of violence amidst and against Blacks in America ties back to the violence exerted upon slaves generations before. The theme of violence intermixes with the notion of race as Wright portrays that violence is deeply entrenched into a system where people are distinguished based on their race. Regardless of Richard’s efforts to break free from this violent lifestyle, a society based on differences will always feed on an inescapable discourse. Wright’s skeptical view of Christianity mirrors the religious presence for many slaves. Throughout Black Boy, this skepticism of religion as Richard regards Christianity as being primarily based on a general inclusion in group rather than incorporating any meaningful, spiritual connection to God. The general state of poverty and hunger that Wright endures reflects, to a lesser degree, similar obstacles that slaves faced. Wright’s portray of hunger goes beyond a lack of food to represent a metaphorical kind of hunger in his yearning for a better, freer life. In his search for a better life in the North, Richard is seeking to fulfill both his physical and metaphorical hungers for more. The cyclical portrayal of poverty in Black Boy represents society as a personified enemy that crushes dreams for those who aren’t in command of high society. The strong attempt at maintaining family unity also relates to the efforts amidst slaves to remain connected through such immense hardship. Wright’s longing to journey North in search of improvement embody the slaves longing to follow the North Star on the freedom trains in search of freedom. Despite the harsh reality upon arrival, throughout Black Boy, the North is represented as a land of opportunity and freedom. Lastly, Wright’s focus on literacy as a weapon towards personal freedom also reflects the efforts of many slaves hoping to free themselves through the ability to read and write. The emphasis on literacy complicates the notion of finding freedom from a physical space to a mental power attained through education.'''

Original Publication[edit]
Wright wrote the entire manuscript in 1943 under the working title, Black Confession. By December, when Wright delivered the book to his agent, he had changed the title to American Hunger. The first fourteen chapters, about his Mississippi childhood, are compiled in "Part One: Southern Night," and the last six chapters, about Chicago, are included in "Part Two: The Horror and the Glory." In January 1944, Harper and Brothers accepted all twenty chapters, and was for a scheduled fall publication of the book.

Partial Publications[edit]
In June 1944, the Book of the Month Club expressed an interest in only "Part One: Southern Night." In response, Wright agreed to eliminate the Chicago section, and in August, he renamed the shortened book as Black Boy. Harper and Brothers published it under that title in 1945 and it sold 195,000 retail copies in its first edition and 351,000 copies through the Book-of-the-Month Club.[1]

Parts of the Chicago chapters were published during Wright's lifetime as magazine articles, but the six chapters were not published together until 1977, by Harper and Row as American Hunger. In 1991, the Library of America published all 20 chapters, as Wright had originally intended, under the title Black Boy (American Hunger) as part of their volume of Wright's Later Works.[1]

The Book of the Month Club played an important role in Wright's career. It selected his 1940 novel, Native Son, as the first Book of the Month Club written by a black American.[2] Wright was willing to change his Black Boy book to get a second endorsement. However, he wrote in his journal that the Book of the Month Club had yielded to pressure from the Communist Party in asking him to eliminate the chapters that dealt with his membership in and disillusionment with the Communist Party.[1]

Reception
'''Upon its release, Black Boy gained significant traction, both positive and negative, from readers and critics alike. In February of 1945, Black Boy was a Book of the Month Club selection, bringing it immediate fame and acclaim. Black Boy was also featured in a list compiled by the Lending Section of the American Library Association labeled “50 Outstanding Books of 1945.” The list, which was compiled by numerous individuals and institutions acclaims Black Boy as “the author's account of his boyhood [that] is a grim record of frustration, race tension, and suffering.” From 1996-2000, the Round Rock Independent School District board in Texas voted 4-2 against a proposal to remove Richard Wright’s Black Boy from reading lists at local schools, eventually deciding the content of the book was worthy and necessary in schools. In numerous cases of attempted censorship for Black Boy, Richard Wright’s widow, Ellen Wright, stood up and publicly defended the book, claiming that the censorship of Black Boy would be “tantamount to an American tragedy.” Black Boy was most recently challenged in Michigan in 2007 by the Howell High School for distributing explicit materials to minors, a ruling that was quickly overruled by a prosecutor who found “the explicit passages illustrated a larger literary, artistic, or political message.”'''

'''Black Boy has come under fire by numerous states, institutions, and individuals alike. Most petitioners of the book criticize Wright for being anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, overly sexual and obscene, and most commonly, for portraying a grim picture of race relations in America. In 1972, Black Boy was banned in Michigan schools after parents found the content to be overly sexual and generally unsuitable for teens. In 1975, the book was challenged in both Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Tennessee, both places claiming the book was obscene and instigated racial tension. Black Boy was first challenged in New York in 1976 by the board of education of the Island Trees Free School District in New York. It was soon''' the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case in 1982. Petitioners described the autobiography as "objectionable" and "improper fare for school students."[3] The book was later challenged in Lincoln, Nebraska on accounts of its “corruptive, obscene nature.” In May of 1997, the President of the North Florida Ministerial Alliance condemned the inclusion of Black Boy in Jacksonville’s public schools, claiming the content is not “right for high school students” due to profanity and racial references.

Bibliography of sources for editing Black Boy article
Adams, T. D. (1990). Richard wright: 'Wearing the mask,'. Telling lies in modern american autobiography (pp. 69-83) The University of North Carolina Press. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420021254/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=9b9aed85

Andrews, W. L. (1993). Richard wright and the african-american autobiography tradition. Style, 27, 271-282. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420035602/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=3c580a9a

Butler, R. (2005). Wright, richard [nathaniel]. In A. Bendixen, & S. Serafin (Eds.), Continuum encyclopedia of american literature. London, UK: Continuum. Retrieved from https://proxy.library.georgetown.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/amlit/wright_richard_nathaniel/0

Camp, C. (1991). The rhetoric of catalogues in richard wright's 'black boy.'. Melus, 17, 29+. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A13471992/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=a5bcedcb

Dykema-VanderArk, A. (2019a). An overview of black boy. Literature resource center. Detroit, MI: Gale. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420000827/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=7e7ba018

Foerstel, H. N. (2002). Banned in the U.S.A. : A reference guide to book censorship in schools and public libraries. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/georgetown/detail.action?docID=3000898

Gibson, D. B. (1969). Wright's invisible native son. American Quarterly, 21, 728-738. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420073207/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=c40c5726

Joyce, J. A. (2001). Wright, richard (1908–1960). In V. Smith (Ed.), African american writers (2nd ed. ed., pp. 875-894). New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX1387200066/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=8e2fb644

Lystad, M. (1994). Richard wright: Overview. In L. S. Berger (Ed.), Twentieth-century young adult writers. Detroit, MI: St. James Press. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420008836/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=4832a8a9

Mahony, M. (2001). Critical essay on "black boy". In D. M. Galens, J. Smith & E. Thomason (Eds.), Nonfiction classics for students: Presenting analysis, context, and criticism on nonfiction works. Detroit, MI: Gale. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420035600/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=e8eff05f

Mehrvand, A. (2010). The introductory essay: Richard wright’s covert challenging of jim crowism and uncle tomism. The Journal of Teaching Language Skills, 2, 53-72. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420124627/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=94c39aac

Oleson, C. W. (1972). The symbolic richness of richard wright's 'bright and morning star,'. Negro American Literature Forum, 6, 110-112. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420040603/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=c7d19a80

Porter, H. A. (1993). The horror and the glory: Wright's portrait of the artist in black boy and american hunger. In H. L. Gates Jr., & K. A. Appiah (Eds.), Richard wright: Critical perspectives past and present (pp. 316-327). New York: Amistad. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420051191/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=4bf3caca

Poulos, J. H. (1997). "Shouting curses": The politics of "bad" language in richard wright's 'black boy.'. The Journal of Negro History, 82, 54+. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A20757362/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=2c6cd5b2

Saunders, J. R. (1987). The social significance of wright's bigger thomas. College Literature, 14, 32-37. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420051188/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=5bea8f53

Stepto, R. B. (1977). I thought I knew these people': Richard wright & the afro-american literary tradition. The Massachusetts Review, 18, 525-541. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1100003311/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=057e1596

Whitted, Q. J. (2004). "Using my grandmother's life as a model": Richard wright and the gendered politics of religious representation.The Southern Literary Journal, 36, 13+. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A117607167/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=6096892f

= Draft Two of Contributions to Black Boy Wikipedia Page =

Lead Section
Black Boy (1945) is a memoir by American author Richard Wright, detailing his youth in the South: Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, and his eventual move to Chicago, where he establishes his writing career and becomes involved with the Communist Party in the United States. 'Black Boy'' gained such high acclaim in the United State’s because of Wright’s honest and profound depiction of racism in America. While the book gained significant recognition, much of the reception throughout and after the publication process was highly controversial.'''

Background
'Richard Wright’s Black Boy'' was written in 1943 and published 2 years later (1945) in the early years of his career. Wright wrote Black Boy as a response to the experiences he had growing up as a poor Black boy in America. Given that Black Boy is partially autobiographical, many of the anecdotes stem from real experiences throughout Wright’s childhood. Richard Wright’s family spent much of their life in deep poverty, enduring hunger and illness moving around the country in search of a better life. Wright cites his family and childhood environment as the primary influence in his writing. Specifically, Wright’s family's religious presence throughout his childhood also held a strong influence in both his religious outlook and his writing. Similarly, Wright’s experiences growing up in poverty enduring hunger caused considerable distress that he referenced repeatedly in Black Boy. Most generally, Wright credits his influence of Black Boy back to the racial inequalities he sustained throughout his travels in America. Wright learned the power of reading and writing as a means towards “new ways of looking and seeing” at a young age. When he was seventeen, he left Jackson to find work in Memphis where he became heavily involved in literary groups and publications and expanded on his use of words as the weapon “to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for the life that gnaws in us” that is seen in Black Boy. Wright claims that he chose to write about the experiences referenced in Black Boy in an effort to “look squarely at his life, to build a bridge of words between him and the world.”'''

Plot Summary
Black Boy (American Hunger) is an autobiography following Richard Wright's childhood and young adulthood. It is split into two sections, "Southern Night" (concerning his childhood in the South) and "The Horror and the Glory" (concerning his early adult years in Chicago).

"Southern Night"[edit]
The book begins with a mischievous four-year-old Wright setting fire to his grandmother's house. Wright is a curious child living in a household of strict, religious women and violent, irresponsible men. After his father deserts his family, young Wright is shuffled back and forth between his sick mother, his fanatically religious grandmother, and various maternal aunts, uncles and orphanages attempting to take him in. Despite the efforts of various people and groups to take Wright in, he essentially raises himself with no central home. He quickly chafes against his surroundings, reading instead of playing with other children, and rejecting the church in favor of agnosticism at a young age. '''Throughout his mischief and hardship, Wright gets involved in fighting and drinking before the age of six. When Wright turns eleven, he begins taking jobs and is quickly introduced to the racism that constitutes much of his future. He continues to feel''' more out of place as he grows older and comes in contact with the Jim Crow racism of the 1920s South. He finds these circumstances generally unjust and fights attempts to quell his intellectual curiosity and potential as he dreams of moving north and becoming a writer.

"The Horror and the Glory"[edit]
'''In an effort of achieving his dreams of moving north, Wright steals and lies until he attains enough money for a ticket to Memphis. Wright’s dreams of escaping racism in his move North are quickly disillusioned as he encounters similar prejudices and oppressions amidst the people in Memphis, prompting him to continue his journeys towards Chicago.'''

The youth finds the North less racist than the South and begins understanding American race relations more deeply. He holds many jobs, most of them consisting of menial tasks: he washes floors during the day and reads Proust and medical journals at night. At this time, his family is still suffering in poverty, his mother is disabled by a stroke, and his relatives constantly interrogate him about his atheism and "pointless" reading. He finds a job at the post office, where he meets white men who share his cynical view of the world and religion. They invite him to the John Reed Club, an organization that promotes the arts and social change. He becomes involved with a magazine called Left Front and slowly immerses himself in the writers and artists in the Communist Party.

At first he thinks he will find friends within the party, especially among its black members, but he finds them to be just as timid to change as the southern whites he left behind. The Communists fear those who disagree with their ideas and quickly brand Wright as a "counter-revolutionary" for his tendency to question and speak his mind. When Richard tries to leave the party, he is accused of trying to lead others away from it.

After witnessing the trial of another black Communist for counter-revolutionary activity, Wright decides to abandon the party. He is branded an "enemy" of Communism, and party members threaten him away from various jobs and gatherings. He does not fight them because he believes they are clumsily groping toward ideas that he agrees with: unity, tolerance, and equality. Wright ends the book by resolving to use his writing as a way to start a revolution: asserting that everyone has a "hunger" for life that needs to be filled. For Wright, writing is his way to the human heart, and therefore, the closest cure to his hunger.

Genre and Style
'The genre of Richard Wright’s Black Boy'' is a longstanding controversy due to the ambiguity. Black Boy follows Wright’s childhood with a degree of accuracy that suggests it exists as an autobiography, although Wright never confirmed nor denied whether the book was entirely autobiographical or fictitious. None of Wright’s other books follow the truths of his life in the way Black Boy does. The books apparent tendency to intermix fact and fiction is criticized because of the specific dialogue that suggests a degree of fiction. Additionally, Wright omits certain details of his family's background that would typically be included in an autobiographical novel. While Wright may have deviated from historical truths, the book is accurate in the sense that he rarely deviates from narrative truth in the candidness and rawness of his writing.'''

'The style in Black Boy is so highly regarded because of the frankness that defied social demands at the time of Black Boy’s'' publication. Wright negates the racially based oppression he endured through his ability to read and write with eloquence and credibility as well as with his courage to speak back against the dominant norms of society that are holding him back.'''

Analysis
'Given Black Boy’s'' emphasis on racial inequality in America, many of the motifs refer to the lingering aspects of slave narratives in present day. These motifs include violence, religion, starvation, familial unity and lack thereof, literacy, and the North Star as a guide towards freedom. The depictions of lingering animosity based on race are at the core of the arguments for censorship for many critics. The prevalence of violence amidst and against Blacks in America ties back to the violence exerted upon slaves generations before. The theme of violence intermixes with the notion of race as Wright suggests that violence is deeply entrenched into a system where people are distinguished based on their race. Regardless of Richard’s efforts to break free from this violent lifestyle, a society based on differences will always feed on an inescapable discourse. Wright’s skeptical view of Christianity mirrors the religious presence for many slaves. Throughout Black Boy, this skepticism of religion is present as Richard regards Christianity as being primarily based on a general inclusion in a group rather than incorporating any meaningful, spiritual connection to God. The general state of poverty and hunger that Wright endures reflects, to a lesser degree, similar obstacles that slaves faced. Wright’s portrayal of hunger goes beyond a lack of food to represent a metaphorical kind of hunger in his yearning for a better, freer life. In his search for a better life in the North, Richard is seeking to fulfill both his physical and metaphorical hungers for more. The cyclical portrayal of poverty in Black Boy represents society as a personified enemy that crushes dreams for those who aren’t in command of high society. The strong attempt at maintaining family unity also relates to the efforts amidst slaves to remain connected through such immense hardship. Wright’s longing to journey North in search of improvement embody the slaves longing to follow the North Star on the freedom trains in search of freedom. Despite the harsh reality upon arrival, throughout Black Boy, the North is represented as a land of opportunity and freedom. Lastly, Wright’s focus on literacy as a weapon towards personal freedom also reflects the efforts of many slaves hoping to free themselves through the ability to read and write. The emphasis on literacy complicates the notion of finding freedom from a physical space to a mental power attained through education.'''

'The most general impact of Black Boy'' is shown through Wright’s efforts to bring light to the complexities of race relations in America, both the seen and unseen. Given the oppression and lacking education for blacks in America, the raw honesty of their hardships was rarely heard and even more rarely given literary attention, making the impact of Black Boy’s narrative especially influential. The book works to show the underlying inequalities that blacks face daily in America.'''

Original Publication[edit]
Wright wrote the entire manuscript in 1943 under the working title, Black Confession. By December, when Wright delivered the book to his agent, he had changed the title to American Hunger. The first fourteen chapters, about his Mississippi childhood, are compiled in "Part One: Southern Night," and the last six chapters, about Chicago, are included in "Part Two: The Horror and the Glory." In January 1944, Harper and Brothers accepted all twenty chapters, and was for a scheduled fall publication of the book. Black Boy is currently published by HarperCollins Publisher as a hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

Partial Publications[edit]
In June 1944, the Book of the Month Club expressed an interest in only "Part One: Southern Night." In response, Wright agreed to eliminate the Chicago section, and in August, he renamed the shortened book as Black Boy. Harper and Brothers published it under that title in 1945 and it sold 195,000 retail copies in its first edition and 351,000 copies through the Book-of-the-Month Club.[1]

Parts of the Chicago chapters were published during Wright's lifetime as magazine articles, but the six chapters were not published together until 1977, by Harper and Row as American Hunger. In 1991, the Library of America published all 20 chapters, as Wright had originally intended, under the title Black Boy (American Hunger) as part of their volume of Wright's Later Works.[1]

The Book of the Month Club played an important role in Wright's career. It selected his 1940 novel, Native Son, as the first Book of the Month Club written by a black American.[2] Wright was willing to change his Black Boy book to get a second endorsement. However, he wrote in his journal that the Book of the Month Club had yielded to pressure from the Communist Party in asking him to eliminate the chapters that dealt with his membership in and disillusionment with the Communist Party.[1]

Reception
'Upon its release, Black Boy'' gained significant traction, both positive and negative, from readers and critics alike. In February of 1945, Black Boy was a Book of the Month Club selection, bringing it immediate fame and acclaim. Black Boy was also featured in a list compiled by the Lending Section of the American Library Association labeled “50 Outstanding Books of 1945.” The list, which was compiled by numerous individuals and institutions acclaims Black Boy as “the author's account of his boyhood [that] is a grim record of frustration, race tension, and suffering.” From 1996-2000, the Round Rock Independent School District board in Texas voted 4-2 against a proposal to remove Richard Wright’s Black Boy from reading lists at local schools, eventually deciding the content of the book was worthy and necessary in schools. In numerous cases of attempted censorship for Black Boy, Richard Wright’s widow, Ellen Wright, stood up and publicly defended the book, claiming that the censorship of Black Boy would be “tantamount to an American tragedy.” Black Boy was most recently challenged in Michigan in 2007 by the Howell High School for distributing explicit materials to minors, a ruling that was quickly overruled by a prosecutor who found that “the explicit passages illustrated a larger literary, artistic, or political message.”'''

'Black Boy'' has come under fire by numerous states, institutions, and individuals alike. Most petitioners of the book criticize Wright for being anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, overly sexual and obscene, and most commonly, for portraying a grim picture of race relations in America. In 1972, Black Boy was banned in Michigan schools after parents found the content to be overly sexual and generally unsuitable for teens. In 1975, the book was challenged in both Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Tennessee, both places claiming the book was obscene and instigated racial tension. Black Boy was first challenged in New York in 1976 by the board of education of the Island Trees Free School District in New York. It was soon''' the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case in 1982. Petitioners against the inclusion of Black Boy described the autobiography as "objectionable" and "improper fare for school students."[3] The book was later challenged in Lincoln, Nebraska on accounts of its “corruptive, obscene nature.” In May of 1997, the President of the North Florida Ministerial Alliance condemned the inclusion of Black Boy in Jacksonville’s public schools, claiming the content is not “right for high school students” due to profanity and racial references.

Bibliography of sources for editing Black Boy article
Adams, T. D. (1990). Richard wright: 'Wearing the mask,'. Telling lies in modern american autobiography (pp. 69-83) The University of North Carolina Press. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420021254/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=9b9aed85

Andrews, W. L. (1993). Richard wright and the african-american autobiography tradition. Style, 27, 271-282. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420035602/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=3c580a9a

Butler, R. (2005). Wright, richard [nathaniel]. In A. Bendixen, & S. Serafin (Eds.), Continuum encyclopedia of american literature. London, UK: Continuum. Retrieved from https://proxy.library.georgetown.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/amlit/wright_richard_nathaniel/0

Camp, C. (1991). The rhetoric of catalogues in richard wright's 'black boy.'. Melus, 17, 29+. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A13471992/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=a5bcedcb

Dykema-VanderArk, A. (2019a). An overview of black boy. Literature resource center. Detroit, MI: Gale. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420000827/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=7e7ba018

Foerstel, H. N. (2002). Banned in the U.S.A. : A reference guide to book censorship in schools and public libraries. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/georgetown/detail.action?docID=3000898

Gibson, D. B. (1969). Wright's invisible native son. American Quarterly, 21, 728-738. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420073207/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=c40c5726

Joyce, J. A. (2001). Wright, richard (1908–1960). In V. Smith (Ed.), African american writers (2nd ed. ed., pp. 875-894). New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX1387200066/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=8e2fb644

Lystad, M. (1994). Richard wright: Overview. In L. S. Berger (Ed.), Twentieth-century young adult writers. Detroit, MI: St. James Press. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420008836/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=4832a8a9

Mahony, M. (2001). Critical essay on "black boy". In D. M. Galens, J. Smith & E. Thomason (Eds.), Nonfiction classics for students: Presenting analysis, context, and criticism on nonfiction works. Detroit, MI: Gale. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420035600/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=e8eff05f

Mehrvand, A. (2010). The introductory essay: Richard wright’s covert challenging of jim crowism and uncle tomism. The Journal of Teaching Language Skills, 2, 53-72. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420124627/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=94c39aac

Oleson, C. W. (1972). The symbolic richness of richard wright's 'bright and morning star,'. Negro American Literature Forum, 6, 110-112. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420040603/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=c7d19a80

Porter, H. A. (1993). The horror and the glory: Wright's portrait of the artist in black boy and american hunger. In H. L. Gates Jr., & K. A. Appiah (Eds.), Richard wright: Critical perspectives past and present (pp. 316-327). New York: Amistad. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420051191/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=4bf3caca

Poulos, J. H. (1997). "Shouting curses": The politics of "bad" language in richard wright's 'black boy.'. The Journal of Negro History, 82, 54+. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A20757362/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=2c6cd5b2

Saunders, J. R. (1987). The social significance of wright's bigger thomas. College Literature, 14, 32-37. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420051188/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=5bea8f53

Stepto, R. B. (1977). I thought I knew these people': Richard wright & the afro-american literary tradition. The Massachusetts Review, 18, 525-541. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1100003311/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=057e1596

Whitted, Q. J. (2004). "Using my grandmother's life as a model": Richard wright and the gendered politics of religious representation.The Southern Literary Journal, 36, 13+. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A117607167/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=6096892f

= Draft Three of Contributions to Black Boy Wikipedia Page = Black Boy (1945) is a memoir by American author Richard Wright, detailing his youth in the South: Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, and his eventual move to Chicago, where he establishes his writing career and becomes involved with the Communist Party in the United States. Black Boy is a text which is meant to represent slavery and oppression from the perspective of a young boy, and Wright wrote this from the perspective of himself. This book is the first of it’s kind to be published from the perspective of the life of a young, African American boy.[ citation needed] From this unstructured upbringing into white culture, this text raised much controversy with white supremacists because of his portrayal of White Southernism and language that he frequently uses. Despite these controversial opinions, Black Boy became an instantaneous best-seller after being published in 1945. Even though this text is a detailed memoir, Wright’s story still shows substantive instances of underlying themes and symbolism. 'Black Boy'' gained such high acclaim in the United State’s because of Wright’s honest and profound depiction of racism in America. While the book gained significant recognition, much of the reception throughout and after the publication process was highly controversial.'''

Background[edit]
Richard Wright’s Black Boy was written in 1943 and published 2 years later (1945) in the early years of his career. Wright wrote Black Boy as a response to the experiences he had growing up as a poor Black boy in America. Given that Black Boy is partially autobiographical, many of the anecdotes stem from real experiences throughout Wright’s childhood. Richard Wright’s family spent much of their life in deep poverty, enduring hunger and illness moving around the country in search of a better life.[1] Wright cites his family and childhood environment as the primary influence in his writing.[2] Specifically, Wright’s family's religious presence throughout his childhood also held a strong influence in both his religious outlook and his writing.[2] Similarly, Wright’s experiences growing up in poverty enduring hunger caused considerable distress that he referenced repeatedly in Black Boy.[2] Most generally, Wright credits his influence of Black Boy back to the racial inequalities he sustained throughout his travels in America.[3] Wright learned the power of reading and writing as a means towards “new ways of looking and seeing” at a young age.[3] When he was seventeen, he left Jackson to find work in Memphis where he became heavily involved in literary groups and publications and expanded on his use of words as the weapon “to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for the life that gnaws in us” that is seen in Black Boy.[1] Wright claims that he chose to write about the experiences referenced in Black Boy in an effort to “look squarely at his life, to build a bridge of words between him and the world.”[2]

Plot summary[edit]
Black Boy (American Hunger) is an autobiography following Richard Wright's childhood and young adulthood. It is split into two sections, "Southern Night" (concerning his childhood in the south) and "The Horror and the Glory" (concerning his early adult years in Chicago). Richard Wright was born on September 4, 1908, to an uneducated farmer and a school teacher. Throughout the entirety of his live Wright encounters many hardships, many of these expressed in his novel, accurately representing the common hardships and struggles that most African Americans faced while growing up during the early 1900s. Richard Wright became a voice for Black writers during his time, showing how their existence intertwines with American culture and their contribution to society. This autobiography shows the growth of Richard Wright through his almost never-ending struggles and lessons that he learns throughout the journey of his life. http://www.newsreel.org/guides/richardw.htm

Themes[edit]

Although Black Boy is a Even though this story a true, personal account of Richard Wright’s life and the obstacles implications that he faced going through i t, there are many is a large amount of themes intertwined throughout from beginning to end. The need for control, the overall effects of racism, the perseverance shown through the characters and the distorted distraught perception of love shown in the novel all allude to the and display the unimaginable hardships that people belonging to the African American community faced throughout this time during this time of extreme social hardship. These detailed accounts are a crucial part of the history and oppression of United State’s history. The broken down themes displayed below were common truths among the African American community during the early to mid 19th century.

The story begins with Richard Wright, as a young four- year- old mistakenly burning down his family’s home in Natchez, Mississippi. This leads to a series of beatings inflicted by his mother almost killing him and eventually leads to his father abandoning him and his family for another woman, leaving the family financially desolate. This introduction to the Wright family’s situation demonstrates the conflicts and the main themes of the novel. Beginning this novel at such a young age and crucial developmental time in a child’s life shows the boy’s true unbreakable spirit from a very young age. Wright learns to defy authority early on his life and this theme continues to grow throughout the remainder of the memoir. This leads him to coming into contact with a lot of beatings and mishaps along the way. Perseverance is definitely a crucial theme that carries out throughout the entirety of the novel. Wright continues to show his upbeat view towards life throughout the following entirety of the two sections. The representation of love is similarly influential in the text given Wright’s complex relationship with his mother who continuously beats him. v ery interesting in the text, Wright knows that his parents or at least his Mother loves him but she continues to beat him and rarely shows the affection that he desires. This idealized “love” however has been tainted by the oppression they are facing during this time of segregation. How can Wright’s mother be so kind and affectionate to him when she knows that the world will show him no less mercy? She knows that her son has a very strong spirit and she can influence him to stick through the hardest of times. This non-traditional theme of love, is one that really focuses on Wright’s future and the serious obstacles implications that he is bound to face being an African American male during the turn of the century. [4] Another apparent theme in Richard Wright’s autobiography is the theme of racism. and it’s effects. It is not a secret that the early 1900’s was a very controversial time between abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates. , there were those who were all for freedom and others that were still stuck in their old fashioned, bias ways of slavery. Through Wright’s story there are many observations on the effects and implications of racism around the United States. In many ways racism was built into the foundations of the United States, even though this was in no way fair or humane ways of running the country. Many people did not know any other way to do things, including the African Americans that were being oppressed. Structuring Structuralizing this autobiography with in such a way, where it gives graphic accounts of racism towards Wright as a child and young adult, really gives readers one an insight into the adolescence of an African American at the time what it was like growing up as an African American in their time period. Wright’s child-like innocence is corrupted taken away from him when he sees first hand how racism has impacted those around him and negatively affected his life. By the end of the story, and when he truly starts to “become himself,” Wright learns to twist the hardships and oppressions that he has faced all of his life to his advantage. This learned knowledge is something that many people do not use to their advantage, instead they would often allow these hardships to bring them down, digging themselves into a deeper darker hole than there ever was before. Not doing this is an excellent example of perseverance, or the act of overcoming diversity. Not only does this racism impact how the African Americans people are treated by the majority in the novel but also how they view themselves. This culture did not appreciate the skills and the dreams of one another, after being torn down through the colonization of many people, which results in many African Americans naturally doubting their abilities and the abilities of others. In the story Wright has shown skills and dreams that he wants to utilize, but many of his African American peers doubt his abilities. There are however, white people in the story that do show respect to him regarding his skills and dreams. This is almost a form of validation, that the African Americans must acquire from the White people in order for their esteem to be accredited. Interesting enough this is not simply a novel about a fictional character that overcame many hardships and entered into success. This is a story about a real man who proved himself to the world, becoming a voice for the African American community.

"Southern Night"[edit]
The book begins with a mischievous four-year-old Wright setting fire to his grandmother's house. Wright is a curious child living in a household of strict, religious women and violent, irresponsible men. After his father deserts his family, young Wright is shuffled back and forth between his sick mother, his fanatically religious grandmother, and various maternal aunts, uncles and orphanages attempting to take him in. Despite the efforts of various people and groups to take Wright in, he essentially raises himself with no central home. He quickly chafes against his surroundings, reading instead of playing with other children, and rejecting the church in favor of agnosticism at a young age. Throughout his mischief and hardship, Wright gets involved in fighting and drinking before the age of six. When Wright turns eleven, he begins taking jobs and is quickly introduced to the racism that constitutes much of his future. He continues to feel more out of place as he grows older and comes in contact with the Jim Crow racism of the 1920s South. He finds these circumstances generally unjust and fights attempts to quell his intellectual curiosity and potential as he dreams of moving north and becoming a writer.

"The Horror and the Glory"[edit]
In an effort of achieving his dreams of moving north, Wright steals and lies until he attains enough money for a ticket to Memphis. Wright’s dreams of escaping racism in his move North are quickly disillusioned as he encounters similar prejudices and oppressions amidst the people in Memphis, prompting him to continue his journeys towards Chicago.

The youth finds the North less racist than the South and begins understanding American race relations more deeply. He holds many jobs, most of them consisting of menial tasks: he washes floors during the day and reads Proust and medical journals at night. At this time, his family is still suffering in poverty, his mother is disabled by a stroke, and his relatives constantly interrogate him about his atheism and "pointless" reading. He finds a job at the post office, where he meets white men who share his cynical view of the world and religion. They invite him to the John Reed Club, an organization that promotes the arts and social change. He becomes involved with a magazine called Left Front and slowly immerses himself in the writers and artists in the Communist Party.

At first he thinks he will find friends within the party, especially among its black members, but he finds them to be just as timid to change as the southern whites he left behind. The Communists fear those who disagree with their ideas and quickly brand Wright as a "counter-revolutionary" for his tendency to question and speak his mind. When Richard tries to leave the party, he is accused of trying to lead others away from it.

After witnessing the trial of another black Communist for counter-revolutionary activity, Wright decides to abandon the party. He remains branded an "enemy" of Communism, and party members threaten him away from various jobs and gatherings. He does not fight them because he believes they are clumsily groping toward ideas that he agrees with: unity, tolerance, and equality. Wright ends the book by resolving to use his writing as a way to start a revolution: asserting that everyone has a "hunger" for life that needs to be filled. For Wright, writing is his way to the human heart, and therefore, the closest cure to his hunger.

Genre and Style[edit]
The genre of Richard Wright’s Black Boy is a longstanding controversy due to the ambiguity. Black Boy follows Wright’s childhood with a degree of accuracy that suggests it exists as an autobiography, although Wright never confirmed nor denied whether the book was entirely autobiographical or fictitious.[5] None of Wright’s other books follow the truths of his life in the way Black Boy does. The books apparent tendency to intermix fact and fiction is criticized because of the specific dialogue that suggests a degree of fiction.[5] Additionally, Wright omits certain details of his family's background that would typically be included in an autobiographical novel.[5] While Wright may have deviated from historical truths, the book is accurate in the sense that he rarely deviates from narrative truth in the candidness and rawness of his writing.[5]

The style in Black Boy is so highly regarded because of the frankness that defied social demands at the time of Black Boy’s publication.[6] Wright negates the racially based oppression he endured through his ability to read and write with eloquence and credibility as well as with his courage to speak back against the dominant norms of society that are holding him back.[6]

Analysis[edit]
Given Black Boy’s emphasis on racial inequality in America, many of the motifs refer to the lingering aspects of slave narratives in present day. These motifs include violence, religion, starvation, familial unity and lack thereof, literacy, and the North Star as a guide towards freedom.[7] The depictions of lingering animosity based on race are at the core of the arguments for censorship for many critics. The prevalence of violence amidst and against Blacks in America ties back to the violence exerted upon slaves generations before.[7] The theme of violence intermixes with the notion of race as Wright suggests that violence is deeply entrenched into a system where people are distinguished based on their race. Regardless of Richard’s efforts to break free from this violent lifestyle, a society based on differences will always feed on an inescapable discourse. Wright’s skeptical view of Christianity mirrors the religious presence for many slaves.[1] Throughout Black Boy, this skepticism of religion is present as Richard regards Christianity as being primarily based on a general inclusion in a group rather than incorporating any meaningful, spiritual connection to God. The general state of poverty and hunger that Wright endures reflects, to a lesser degree, similar obstacles that slaves faced.[7] Wright’s portrayal of hunger goes beyond a lack of food to represent a metaphorical kind of hunger in his yearning for a better, freer life. In his search for a better life in the North, Richard is seeking to fulfill both his physical and metaphorical hungers for more. The cyclical portrayal of poverty in Black Boy represents society as a personified enemy that crushes dreams for those who aren’t in command of high society. The strong attempt at maintaining family unity also relates to the efforts amidst slaves to remain connected through such immense hardship.[1] Wright’s longing to journey North in search of improvement embody the slaves longing to follow the North Star on the freedom trains in search of freedom.[7] Despite the harsh reality upon arrival, throughout Black Boy, the North is represented as a land of opportunity and freedom. Lastly, Wright’s focus on literacy as a weapon towards personal freedom also reflects the efforts of many slaves hoping to free themselves through the ability to read and write.[7] The emphasis on literacy complicates the notion of finding freedom from a physical space to a mental power attained through education.

The most general impact of Black Boy is shown through Wright’s efforts to bring light to the complexities of race relations in America, both the seen and unseen. Given the oppression and lacking education for blacks in America, the raw honesty of their hardships was rarely heard and even more rarely given literary attention, making the impact of Black Boy’s narrative especially influential. The book works to show the underlying inequalities that blacks face daily in America.[1]

Original Publication[edit]
Wright wrote the entire manuscript in 1943 under the working title, Black Confession. By December, when Wright delivered the book to his agent, he had changed the title to American Hunger.The first fourteen chapters, about his Mississippi childhood, are compiled in "Part One: Southern Night," and the last six chapters, about Chicago, are included in "Part Two: The Horror and the Glory." In January 1944, Harper and Brothers accepted all twenty chapters, and was for a scheduled fall publication of the book. Black Boy is currently published by HarperCollins Publisher as a hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook.[8]

Partial Publications[edit]
In June 1944, the Book of the Month Club expressed an interest in only "Part One: Southern Night." In response, Wright agreed to eliminate the Chicago section, and in August, he renamed the shortened book as Black Boy. Harper and Brothers published it under that title in 1945 and it sold 195,000 retail copies in its first edition and 351,000 copies through the Book-of-the-Month Club.[9]

Parts of the Chicago chapters were published during Wright's lifetime as magazine articles, but the six chapters were not published together until 1977, by Harper and Row as American Hunger.In 1991, the Library of America published all 20 chapters, as Wright had originally intended, under the title Black Boy (American Hunger) as part of their volume of Wright's Later Works.[9]

The Book of the Month Club played an important role in Wright's career. It selected his 1940 novel, Native Son, as the first Book of the Month Club written by a black American.[10] Wright was willing to change his Black Boy book to get a second endorsement. However, he wrote in his journal that the Book of the Month Club had yielded to pressure from the Communist Party in asking him to eliminate the chapters that dealt with his membership in and disillusionment with the Communist Party.[9] In order for Wright to get his memoir really “noticed” by the general public, required he divide up the portions of his book in two sections. Today, many still read it as it was originally intended because it tells the full story and contexts behind the life of Richard Wright. But during the time, it was very difficult for an African American to get work published in such a credible publication of the time, so even though he was having to leave out a few of his personal opinions, it was still his time to get his voice out there even though it was only through the first half.

Reception[edit]
Upon its release, Black Boy gained significant traction, both positive and negative, from readers and critics alike. In February of 1945, Black Boy was a Book of the Month Club selection, bringing it immediate fame and acclaim.[1] Black Boy was also featured in a list compiled by the Lending Section of the American Library Association labeled “50 Outstanding Books of 1945.”[11] The list, which was compiled by numerous individuals and institutions acclaims Black Boy as “the author's account of his boyhood [that] is a grim record of frustration, race tension, and suffering.”[11]From 1996-2000, the Round Rock Independent School District board in Texas voted 4-2 against a proposal to remove Richard Wright’s Black Boy from reading lists at local schools, eventually deciding the content of the book was worthy and necessary in schools. In numerous cases of attempted censorship for Black Boy, Richard Wright’s widow, Ellen Wright, stood up and publicly defended the book, claiming that the censorship of Black Boy would be “tantamount to an American tragedy.”[12] Black Boy was most recently challenged in Michigan in 2007 by the Howell High School for distributing explicit materials to minors, a ruling that was quickly overruled by a prosecutor who found that “the explicit passages illustrated a larger literary, artistic, or political message.”[13]

Black Boy has come under fire by numerous states, institutions, and individuals alike. Most petitioners of the book criticize Wright for being anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, overly sexual and obscene, and most commonly, for portraying a grim picture of race relations in America.[14] In 1972, Black Boy was banned in Michigan schools after parents found the content to be overly sexual and generally unsuitable for teens.[13] In 1975, the book was challenged in both Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Tennessee, both places claiming the book was obscene and instigated racial tension.[13] Black Boy was first challenged in New York in 1976 by the board of education of the Island Trees Free School District in New York.[13] It was soon the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case in 1982. Petitioners against the inclusion of Black Boy described the autobiography as "objectionable" and "improper fare for school students."[15] The book was later challenged in Lincoln, Nebraska on accounts of its “corruptive, obscene nature.”[16] In May of 1997, the President of the North Florida Ministerial Alliance condemned the inclusion of Black Boy in Jacksonville’s public schools, claiming the content is not “right for high school students” due to profanity and racial references.[16]

References[edit]

 * Jump up to: a b c d e f Joyce, Joyce Ann. "Wright, Richard (1908–1960)." African American Writers, edited by Valerie Smith, 2nd ed., vol. 2, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001, pp. 875-894. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX1387200066/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=8e2fb644 . Accessed 3 Apr. 2019.
 * Jump up to: a b c d Dykema-VanderArk, Anthony. "Critical Essay on 'Black Boy'." Nonfiction Classics for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Nonfiction Works, edited by David M. Galens, et al., vol. 1, Gale, 2001. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420035601/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=9a7137da . Accessed 1 Apr. 2019.
 * Jump up to: a b Lystad, Mary. "Richard Wright: Overview." Twentieth-Century Young Adult Writers, edited by Laura Standley Berger, St. James Press, 1994. Twentieth-Century Writers Series. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420008836/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=4832a8a9 . Accessed 1 Apr. 2019.
 * https://login.libproxy.uncg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=11331&site=ehost-live&ebv=EK&ppid=Page-__-14
 * Jump up to: a b c d Adams, Timothy Dow. "Richard Wright: 'Wearing the Mask,'." Novels for Students, edited by Diane Telgen, vol. 1, Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420021254/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=9b9aed85 . Accessed 7 Apr. 2019. Originally published in Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiography, The University of North Carolina Press, 1990, pp. 69-83.
 * Jump up to: a b Andrews, William L. "Richard Wright and the African-American Autobiography Tradition." Nonfiction Classics for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Nonfiction Works, edited by David M. Galens, et al., vol. 1, Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420035602/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=3c580a9a . Accessed 7 Apr. 2019. Originally published in Style, vol. 27, no. 2, Summer 1993, pp. 271-282.
 * Jump up to: a b c d e Stepto, Robert B. "I Thought I Knew These People': Richard Wright & the Afro-American Literary Tradition." Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Sharon R. Gunton, vol. 21, Gale, 1982. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1100003311/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=057e1596 . Accessed 8 Apr. 2019. Originally published in The Massachusetts Review, vol. 18, no. 3, Autumn 1977, pp. 525-541.
 * Noble, Barnes &. "Black Boy|Paperback". Barnes & Noble. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
 * Jump up to: a b c Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., "Note on the Text," pp 407–8 in Richard Wright, Black Boy (American Hunger), The Library of America, 1993.
 * Mitgang, Herbert. "Books of the Times; An American Master and New Discoveries." The New York Times 1 January 1992. Accessed on 14 May 2006.[1].
 * Jump up to: a b "Notable Books List 1945" (PDF). ALA. 1945. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
 * Foerstel, Herbert N.. Banned in the U.S.A. : A Reference Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Public Libraries, Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/georgetown/detail.action?docID=3000898.
 * Jump up to: a b c d "Black Boy by Richard Wright". Banned Library. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
 * Plath, Dara (5 February 2015). "Top 10 Banned Books that Changed the Face of Black History". National Coalition Against Censorship. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
 * "Island Trees Sch. Dist. v. Pico by Pico 457 U.S. 853 (1982)". Justia. Retrieved 30 September 2015.
 * Jump up to: a b "Black Boy by Richard Wright". Banned Library. Retrieved 24 April 2019.

=Draft Four of Contributions to Black Boy Wikipedia Page= Black Boy (1945) is a memoir by American author Richard Wright, detailing his youth in the South: Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, and his eventual move to Chicago, where he establishes his writing career and becomes involved with the Communist Party in the United States. 'Black Boy'' gained such high acclaim in the United State’s because of Wright’s honest and profound depiction of racism in America. While the book gained significant recognition, much of the reception throughout and after the publication process was highly controversial.'''

Background[edit]
Richard Wright’s Black Boy was written in 1943 and published 2 years later (1945) in the early years of his career. Wright wrote Black Boy as a response to the experiences he had growing up as a poor Black boy in America. Given that Black Boy is partially autobiographical, many of the anecdotes stem from real experiences throughout Wright’s childhood. Richard Wright’s family spent much of their life in deep poverty, enduring hunger and illness moving around the country in search of a better life.[1] Wright cites his family and childhood environment as the primary influence in his writing.[2] Specifically, Wright’s family's religious presence throughout his childhood also held a strong influence in both his religious outlook and his writing.[2] Similarly, Wright’s experiences growing up in poverty enduring hunger caused considerable distress that he referenced repeatedly in Black Boy.[2] Most generally, Wright credits his influence of Black Boy back to the racial inequalities he sustained throughout his travels in America.[3] Wright learned the power of reading and writing as a means towards “new ways of looking and seeing” at a young age.[3] When he was seventeen, he left Jackson to find work in Memphis where he became heavily involved in literary groups and publications and expanded on his use of words as the weapon “to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for the life that gnaws in us” that is seen in Black Boy.[1] Wright claims that he chose to write about the experiences referenced in Black Boy in an effort to “look squarely at his life, to build a bridge of words between him and the world.”[2]

Plot summary[edit]
Black Boy (American Hunger) is an autobiography following Richard Wright's childhood and young adulthood. It is split into two sections, "Southern Night" (concerning his childhood in the south) and "The Horror and the Glory" (concerning his early adult years in Chicago).

Themes[edit]
Although Black Boy is a  personal account of Richard Wright’s life and the obstacles he faced, there are many themes intertwined throughout. The need for control, racism, perseverance and the distorted  perception of love in the novel all allude to the unimaginable hardships the African American community faced throughout this time. These detailed accounts are a crucial part of the history and oppression of United State’s history.

Perseverance is a crucial theme throughout the novel. Wright continues to show his upbeat view towards life throughout the following  two sections. The representation of love is similarly influential in the text given Wright’s complex relationship with his mother who continuously beats him. . This idealized “love” has been tainted by the oppression they are facing during this time of segregation. This non-traditional theme of love focuses on Wright’s future and the serious obstacles he is bound to face being an African American during the turn of the century. [4] Another apparent theme in Richard Wright’s autobiography is the theme of racism. the early 1900’s was a very controversial time between abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates. ... Structuring  this autobiography with graphic accounts of racism towards Wright gives readers an insight into the adolescence of an African American at the time ...

"Southern Night"[edit]
The book begins with a mischievous four-year-old Wright setting fire to his grandmother's house. Wright is a curious child living in a household of strict, religious women and violent, irresponsible men. After his father deserts his family, young Wright is shuffled back and forth between his sick mother, his fanatically religious grandmother, and various maternal aunts, uncles and orphanages attempting to take him in. Despite the efforts of various people and groups to take Wright in, he essentially raises himself with no central home. He quickly chafes against his surroundings, reading instead of playing with other children, and rejecting the church in favor of agnosticism at a young age. Throughout his mischief and hardship, Wright gets involved in fighting and drinking before the age of six. When Wright turns eleven, he begins taking jobs and is quickly introduced to the racism that constitutes much of his future. He continues to feel more out of place as he grows older and comes in contact with the Jim Crow racism of the 1920s South. He finds these circumstances generally unjust and fights attempts to quell his intellectual curiosity and potential as he dreams of moving north and becoming a writer.

"The Horror and the Glory"[edit]
In an effort of achieving his dreams of moving north, Wright steals and lies until he attains enough money for a ticket to Memphis. Wright’s dreams of escaping racism in his move North are quickly disillusioned as he encounters similar prejudices and oppressions amidst the people in Memphis, prompting him to continue his journeys towards Chicago.

The youth finds the North less racist than the South and begins understanding American race relations more deeply. He holds many jobs, most of them consisting of menial tasks: he washes floors during the day and reads Proust and medical journals at night. At this time, his family is still suffering in poverty, his mother is disabled by a stroke, and his relatives constantly interrogate him about his atheism and "pointless" reading. He finds a job at the post office, where he meets white men who share his cynical view of the world and religion. They invite him to the John Reed Club, an organization that promotes the arts and social change. He becomes involved with a magazine called Left Front and slowly immerses himself in the writers and artists in the Communist Party.

At first he thinks he will find friends within the party, especially among its black members, but he finds them to be just as timid to change as the southern whites he left behind. The Communists fear those who disagree with their ideas and quickly brand Wright as a "counter-revolutionary" for his tendency to question and speak his mind. When Richard tries to leave the party, he is accused of trying to lead others away from it.

After witnessing the trial of another black Communist for counter-revolutionary activity, Wright decides to abandon the party. He remains branded an "enemy" of Communism, and party members threaten him away from various jobs and gatherings. He does not fight them because he believes they are clumsily groping toward ideas that he agrees with: unity, tolerance, and equality. Wright ends the book by resolving to use his writing as a way to start a revolution: asserting that everyone has a "hunger" for life that needs to be filled. For Wright, writing is his way to the human heart, and therefore, the closest cure to his hunger.

Genre and Style[edit]
The genre of Richard Wright’s Black Boy is a longstanding controversy due to the ambiguity. Black Boy follows Wright’s childhood with a degree of accuracy that suggests it exists as an autobiography, although Wright never confirmed nor denied whether the book was entirely autobiographical or fictitious.[5] None of Wright’s other books follow the truths of his life in the way Black Boy does. The books apparent tendency to intermix fact and fiction is criticized because of the specific dialogue that suggests a degree of fiction.[5] Additionally, Wright omits certain details of his family's background that would typically be included in an autobiographical novel.[5] While Wright may have deviated from historical truths, the book is accurate in the sense that he rarely deviates from narrative truth in the candidness and rawness of his writing.[5]

The style in Black Boy is so highly regarded because of the frankness that defied social demands at the time of Black Boy’s publication.[6] Wright negates the racially based oppression he endured through his ability to read and write with eloquence and credibility as well as with his courage to speak back against the dominant norms of society that are holding him back.[6]

Analysis[edit]
Given Black Boy’s emphasis on racial inequality in America, many of the motifs refer to the lingering aspects of slave narratives in present day. These motifs include violence, religion, starvation, familial unity and lack thereof, literacy, and the North Star as a guide towards freedom.[7] The depictions of lingering animosity based on race are at the core of the arguments for censorship for many critics. The prevalence of violence amidst and against Blacks in America ties back to the violence exerted upon slaves generations before.[7] The theme of violence intermixes with the notion of race as Wright suggests that violence is deeply entrenched into a system where people are distinguished based on their race. Regardless of Richard’s efforts to break free from this violent lifestyle, a society based on differences will always feed on an inescapable discourse. Wright’s skeptical view of Christianity mirrors the religious presence for many slaves.[1] Throughout Black Boy, this skepticism of religion is present as Richard regards Christianity as being primarily based on a general inclusion in a group rather than incorporating any meaningful, spiritual connection to God. The general state of poverty and hunger that Wright endures reflects, to a lesser degree, similar obstacles that slaves faced.[7] Wright’s portrayal of hunger goes beyond a lack of food to represent a metaphorical kind of hunger in his yearning for a better, freer life. In his search for a better life in the North, Richard is seeking to fulfill both his physical and metaphorical hungers for more. The cyclical portrayal of poverty in Black Boy represents society as a personified enemy that crushes dreams for those who aren’t in command of high society. The strong attempt at maintaining family unity also relates to the efforts amidst slaves to remain connected through such immense hardship.[1] Wright’s longing to journey North in search of improvement embody the slaves longing to follow the North Star on the freedom trains in search of freedom.[7] Despite the harsh reality upon arrival, throughout Black Boy, the North is represented as a land of opportunity and freedom. Lastly, Wright’s focus on literacy as a weapon towards personal freedom also reflects the efforts of many slaves hoping to free themselves through the ability to read and write.[7] The emphasis on literacy complicates the notion of finding freedom from a physical space to a mental power attained through education.

The most general impact of Black Boy is shown through Wright’s efforts to bring light to the complexities of race relations in America, both the seen and unseen. Given the oppression and lacking education for blacks in America, the raw honesty of their hardships was rarely heard and even more rarely given literary attention, making the impact of Black Boy’s narrative especially influential. The book works to show the underlying inequalities that blacks face daily in America.[1]

Original Publication[edit]
Wright wrote the entire manuscript in 1943 under the working title, Black Confession. By December, when Wright delivered the book to his agent, he had changed the title to American Hunger.The first fourteen chapters, about his Mississippi childhood, are compiled in "Part One: Southern Night," and the last six chapters, about Chicago, are included in "Part Two: The Horror and the Glory." In January 1944, Harper and Brothers accepted all twenty chapters, and was for a scheduled fall publication of the book. Black Boy is currently published by HarperCollins Publisher as a hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook.[8]

Partial Publications[edit]
In June 1944, the Book of the Month Club expressed an interest in only "Part One: Southern Night." In response, Wright agreed to eliminate the Chicago section, and in August, he renamed the shortened book as Black Boy. Harper and Brothers published it under that title in 1945 and it sold 195,000 retail copies in its first edition and 351,000 copies through the Book-of-the-Month Club.[9]

Parts of the Chicago chapters were published during Wright's lifetime as magazine articles, but the six chapters were not published together until 1977, by Harper and Row as American Hunger.In 1991, the Library of America published all 20 chapters, as Wright had originally intended, under the title Black Boy (American Hunger) as part of their volume of Wright's Later Works.[9]

The Book of the Month Club played an important role in Wright's career. It selected his 1940 novel, Native Son, as the first Book of the Month Club written by a black American.[10] Wright was willing to change his Black Boy book to get a second endorsement. However, he wrote in his journal that the Book of the Month Club had yielded to pressure from the Communist Party in asking him to eliminate the chapters that dealt with his membership in and disillusionment with the Communist Party.[9] In order for Wright to get his memoir really “noticed” by the general public, required he divide up the portions of his book in two sections. Today, many still read it as it was originally intended because it tells the full story and contexts behind the life of Richard Wright. But during the time, it was very difficult for an African American to get work published in such a credible publication of the time, so even though he was having to leave out a few of his personal opinions, it was still his time to get his voice out there even though it was only through the first half.

Reception[edit]
Upon its release, Black Boy gained significant traction, both positive and negative, from readers and critics alike. In February of 1945, Black Boy was a Book of the Month Club selection, bringing it immediate fame and acclaim.[1] Black Boy was also featured in a list compiled by the Lending Section of the American Library Association labeled “50 Outstanding Books of 1945.”[11] The list, which was compiled by numerous individuals and institutions acclaims Black Boy as “the author's account of his boyhood [that] is a grim record of frustration, race tension, and suffering.”[11]From 1996-2000, the Round Rock Independent School District board in Texas voted 4-2 against a proposal to remove Richard Wright’s Black Boy from reading lists at local schools, eventually deciding the content of the book was worthy and necessary in schools. In numerous cases of attempted censorship for Black Boy, Richard Wright’s widow, Ellen Wright, stood up and publicly defended the book, claiming that the censorship of Black Boy would be “tantamount to an American tragedy.”[12] Black Boy was most recently challenged in Michigan in 2007 by the Howell High School for distributing explicit materials to minors, a ruling that was quickly overruled by a prosecutor who found that “the explicit passages illustrated a larger literary, artistic, or political message.”[13]

Black Boy has come under fire by numerous states, institutions, and individuals alike. Most petitioners of the book criticize Wright for being anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, overly sexual and obscene, and most commonly, for portraying a grim picture of race relations in America.[14] In 1972, Black Boy was banned in Michigan schools after parents found the content to be overly sexual and generally unsuitable for teens.[13] In 1975, the book was challenged in both Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Tennessee, both places claiming the book was obscene and instigated racial tension.[13] Black Boy was first challenged in New York in 1976 by the board of education of the Island Trees Free School District in New York.[13] It was soon the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case in 1982. Petitioners against the inclusion of Black Boy described the autobiography as "objectionable" and "improper fare for school students."[15] The book was later challenged in Lincoln, Nebraska on accounts of its “corruptive, obscene nature.”[16] In May of 1997, the President of the North Florida Ministerial Alliance condemned the inclusion of Black Boy in Jacksonville’s public schools, claiming the content is not “right for high school students” due to profanity and racial references.[16]

References[edit]

 * Jump up to: a b c d e f Joyce, Joyce Ann. "Wright, Richard (1908–1960)." African American Writers, edited by Valerie Smith, 2nd ed., vol. 2, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001, pp. 875-894. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX1387200066/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=8e2fb644 . Accessed 3 Apr. 2019.
 * Jump up to: a b c d Dykema-VanderArk, Anthony. "Critical Essay on 'Black Boy'." Nonfiction Classics for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Nonfiction Works, edited by David M. Galens, et al., vol. 1, Gale, 2001. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420035601/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=9a7137da . Accessed 1 Apr. 2019.
 * Jump up to: a b Lystad, Mary. "Richard Wright: Overview." Twentieth-Century Young Adult Writers, edited by Laura Standley Berger, St. James Press, 1994. Twentieth-Century Writers Series. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420008836/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=4832a8a9 . Accessed 1 Apr. 2019.
 * https://login.libproxy.uncg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=11331&site=ehost-live&ebv=EK&ppid=Page-__-14
 * Jump up to: a b c d Adams, Timothy Dow. "Richard Wright: 'Wearing the Mask,'." Novels for Students, edited by Diane Telgen, vol. 1, Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420021254/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=9b9aed85 . Accessed 7 Apr. 2019. Originally published in Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiography, The University of North Carolina Press, 1990, pp. 69-83.
 * Jump up to: a b Andrews, William L. "Richard Wright and the African-American Autobiography Tradition." Nonfiction Classics for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Nonfiction Works, edited by David M. Galens, et al., vol. 1, Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420035602/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=3c580a9a . Accessed 7 Apr. 2019. Originally published in Style, vol. 27, no. 2, Summer 1993, pp. 271-282.
 * Jump up to: a b c d e Stepto, Robert B. "I Thought I Knew These People': Richard Wright & the Afro-American Literary Tradition." Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Sharon R. Gunton, vol. 21, Gale, 1982. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1100003311/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=057e1596 . Accessed 8 Apr. 2019. Originally published in The Massachusetts Review, vol. 18, no. 3, Autumn 1977, pp. 525-541.
 * Noble, Barnes &. "Black Boy|Paperback". Barnes & Noble. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
 * Jump up to: a b c Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., "Note on the Text," pp 407–8 in Richard Wright, Black Boy (American Hunger), The Library of America, 1993.
 * Mitgang, Herbert. "Books of the Times; An American Master and New Discoveries." The New York Times 1 January 1992. Accessed on 14 May 2006.[1].
 * Jump up to: a b "Notable Books List 1945" (PDF). ALA. 1945. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
 * Foerstel, Herbert N.. Banned in the U.S.A. : A Reference Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Public Libraries, Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/georgetown/detail.action?docID=3000898.
 * Jump up to: a b c d "Black Boy by Richard Wright". Banned Library. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
 * Plath, Dara (5 February 2015). "Top 10 Banned Books that Changed the Face of Black History". National Coalition Against Censorship. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
 * "Island Trees Sch. Dist. v. Pico by Pico 457 U.S. 853 (1982)". Justia. Retrieved 30 September 2015.

Jump up to: a b "Black Boy by Richard Wright". Banned Library. Retrieved 24 April 2019.

= Draft Four of Contributions to Black Boy Wikipedia Page = Black Boy (1945) is a memoir by black American author Richard Wright, detailing his upbringing. Wright describes his youth in the South: Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, and his eventual move to Chicago, where he establishes his writing career and becomes involved with the Communist Party in the United States. Black Boy gained high acclaim in the United States State's because of Wright’s honest and profound depiction of racism in America. While the book gained significant recognition, much of the reception throughout and after the publication process was highly controversial.

Background[edit]
Richard Wright’s Black Boy was written in 1943 and published 2 years later (1945) in the early years of his career. Wright wrote Black Boy as a response to the experiences he had growing up as a poor Black boy in America.[1] Given that Black Boy is partially autobiographical, many of the anecdotes stem from real experiences throughout Wright’s childhood.[2] Richard Wright’s family spent much of their life in deep poverty, enduring hunger and illness moving around the country in search of a better life.[1] Wright cites his family and childhood environment as the primary influence in his writing.[3] Specifically, Wright’s family's religious presence throughout his childhood also held a strong influence in both his religious outlook and his writing.[3] Similarly, Wright’s experiences growing up in poverty enduring hunger caused considerable distress that he referenced repeatedly in Black Boy.[3] Most generally, Wright credits his influence of Black Boy back to the racial inequalities he sustained throughout his travels in America.[2] Wright learned the power of reading and writing as a means towards “new ways of looking and seeing” at a young age.[2]When he was seventeen, he left Jackson to find work in Memphis where he became heavily involved in literary groups and publications and expanded on his use of words as the weapon “to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for the life that gnaws in us” that is seen in Black Boy.[1] Wright claims that he chose to write about the experiences referenced in Black Boy in an effort to “look squarely at his life, to build a bridge of words between him and the world.”[3]

Plot summary[edit]
Black Boy (American Hunger) is an autobiography following Richard Wright's childhood and young adulthood. It is split into two sections, "Southern Night" (concerning his childhood in the south) and "The Horror and the Glory" (concerning his early adult years in Chicago).

"Southern Night"[edit]
The book begins with a mischievous four-year-old Wright setting fire to his grandmother's house. Wright is a curious child living in a household of strict, religious women and violent, irresponsible men. After his father deserts his family, young Wright is shuffled back and forth between his sick mother, his fanatically religious grandmother, and various maternal aunts, uncles and orphanages attempting to take him in. Despite the efforts of various people and groups to take Wright in, he essentially raises himself with no central home. He quickly chafes against his surroundings, reading instead of playing with other children, and rejecting the church in favor of agnosticism at a young age. Throughout his mischief and hardship, Wright gets involved in fighting and drinking before the age of six. When Wright turns eleven, he begins taking jobs and is quickly introduced to the racism that constitutes much of his future. He continues to feel more out of place as he grows older and comes in contact with the Jim Crow racism of the 1920s South. He finds these circumstances generally unjust and fights attempts to quell his intellectual curiosity and potential as he dreams of moving north and becoming a writer.[4]

"The Horror and the Glory"[edit]
In an effort to achieve of achieving his dreams of moving north, Wright steals and lies until he attains enough money for a ticket to Memphis. Wright’s aspirations dreams of escaping racism in his move North are quickly disillusioned as he encounters similar prejudices and oppressions amidst the people in Memphis, prompting him to continue his journeys towards Chicago.

The youth finds the North less racist than the South and begins understanding American race relations more deeply. He holds many jobs, most of them consisting of menial tasks: he washes floors during the day and reads Proust and medical journals at night. At this time, his family is still suffering in poverty, his mother is disabled by a stroke, and his relatives constantly interrogate him about his atheism and "pointless" reading. He finds a job at the post office, where he meets white men who share his cynical view of the world and religion. They invite him to the John Reed Club, an organization that promotes the arts and social change. He becomes involved with a magazine called Left Front and slowly immerses himself in the writers and artists in the Communist Party.

At first, Wright he thinks he will find friends within the party, especially among its black members, but he finds them to be just as timid to change as the southern whites he left behind. The Communists fear those who disagree with their ideas and quickly brand Wright as a "counter-revolutionary" for his tendency to question and speak his mind. When Richard tries to leave the party, he is accused of trying to lead others away from it.

After witnessing the trial of another black Communist for counter-revolutionary activity, Wright decides to abandon the party. He remains branded an "enemy" of Communism, and party members threaten him away from various jobs and gatherings. He does not fight them because he believes they are clumsily groping toward ideas that he agrees with: unity, tolerance, and equality. Wright ends the book by resolving to use his writing as a way to start a revolution: asserting that everyone has a "hunger" for life that needs to be filled. For Wright, writing is his way to the human heart, and therefore, the closest cure to his hunger.[4]

Genre and Style[edit]
The genre of Richard Wright’s Black Boy is a longstanding controversy due to the ambiguity. Black Boy follows Wright’s childhood with a degree of accuracy that suggests it exists as an autobiography, although Wright never confirmed nor denied whether the book was entirely autobiographical or fictitious.[5] None of Wright’s other books follow the truths of his life in the way Black Boy does.[5] The books apparent tendency to intermix fact and fiction is criticized because of the specific dialogue that suggests a degree of fiction.[5] Additionally, Wright omits certain details of his family's background that would typically be included in an autobiographical novel.[5] While Wright may have deviated from historical truths, the book is accurate in the sense that he rarely deviates from narrative truth in the candidness and rawness of his writing.[6]

The style in Black Boy is so highly regarded because of the frankness that defied social demands at the time of Black Boy’s publication.[7] Wright negates the racially based oppression he endured through his ability to read and write with eloquence and credibility as well as with his courage to speak back against the dominant norms of society that are holding him back.[6]

Analysis[edit]
Given Black Boy’s emphasis on racial inequality in America, many of the motifs refer to the lingering aspects of slave narratives in present day. These motifs include violence, religion, starvation, familial unity and lack thereof, literacy, and the North Star as a guide towards freedom.[3] The depictions of lingering racial animosity based on race are at the core of the arguments in favor of for censorship for many critics.[1] The prevalence of violence amidst and against Blacks in America ties back to the violence exerted upon slaves generations before.[8] The theme of violence intermixes with the notion of race as Wright suggests that violence is deeply entrenched into a system where people are distinguished based on their race.[6] Regardless of Wright's efforts to break free from this violent lifestyle, a society based on differences will always feed on an inescapable discourse. Wright’s skeptical view of Christianity mirrors the religious presence for many slaves.[1] Throughout Black Boy, this skepticism of religion is present as Richard regards Christianity as being primarily based on a general inclusion in a group rather than incorporating any meaningful, spiritual connection to God.[3] The general state of poverty and hunger that Wright endures reflects, to a lesser degree, similar obstacles that slaves faced.[8] Wright’s portrayal of hunger goes beyond a lack of food to represent a metaphorical kind of hunger in his yearning for a better, freer life. In his search for a better life in the North, Richard is seeking to fulfill both his physical and metaphorical hungers for more.[3] The cyclical portrayal of poverty in Black Boy represents society as a personified enemy that crushes dreams for those who aren’t in command of high society.[6] The strong attempt at maintaining family unity also relates to the efforts amidst slaves to remain connected through such immense hardship.[9] Wright’s longing to journey North in search of improvement embodies embody the slaves longing to follow the North Star on the freedom trains in search of freedom.[8] Despite the harsh reality upon arrival, throughout Black Boy, the North is represented as a land of opportunity and freedom. Lastly, Wright’s focus on literacy as a weapon towards personal freedom also reflects the efforts of many slaves hoping to free themselves through the ability to read and write.[8] The emphasis on literacy complicates the notion of finding freedom from a physical space to a mental power attained through education.

The most general impact of Black Boy is shown through Wright’s efforts to bring light to the complexities of race relations in America, both the seen and unseen.[3] Given the oppression and lacking education for blacks in America, the raw honesty of their hardships was rarely heard and even more rarely given literary attention, making the impact of Black Boy’s narrative especially influential. The book works to show the underlying inequalities that Wright faced blacks face daily in America.[1]

Original Publication[edit]
Wright wrote the entire manuscript in 1943 under the working title, Black Confession.[10] By December, when Wright delivered the book to his agent, he had changed the title to American Hunger.[10] The first fourteen chapters, about his Mississippi childhood, are compiled in "Part One: Southern Night," and the last six chapters, about Chicago, are included in "Part Two: The Horror and the Glory."[4] In January 1944, Harper and Brothers accepted all twenty chapters, and was for a scheduled fall publication of the book.[10] Black Boy is currently published by HarperCollins Publisher as a hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook.[11]

Partial Publications[edit]
In June 1944, the Book of the Month Club expressed an interest in only "Part One: Southern Night."[ 10] In response, Wright agreed to eliminate the Chicago section, and in August, he renamed the shortened book as Black Boy.[12] Harper and Brothers published it under that title in 1945 and it sold 195,000 retail copies in its first edition and 351,000 copies through the Book-of-the-Month Club.[12]

Parts of the Chicago chapters were published during Wright's lifetime as magazine articles, but the six chapters were not published together until 1977, by Harper and Row as American Hunger. In 1991, the Library of America published all 20 chapters, as Wright had originally intended, under the title Black Boy (American Hunger) as part of their volume of Wright's Later Works.[12]

The Book-of-the-Month-Club played an important role in Wright's career. It selected his 1940 novel, Native Son', as the first Book of the Month Club written by a black American.[13] Wright was willing to change his Black Boy book to get a second endorsement.[ 12] However, he wrote in his journal that the Book-of-the-Month-Club had yielded to pressure from the Communist Party in asking him to eliminate the chapters that dealt with his membership in and disillusionment with the Communist Party.[12] In order for Wright to get his memoir really “noticed” by the general public, his publisher required that he divide up the portions of his book into''' in two sections.[10]  Today, many still read it as it was originally intended because it tells the full story and contexts behind the life of Richard Wright. But during the time, it was very difficult for an African American to get work published in such a credible publication of the time, so even though he was having to leave out a few of his personal opinions, it was still his time to get his voice out there even though it was only through the first half.

Reception[edit]
Upon its release, Black Boy gained significant traction- both positive and negative- from readers and critics alike.[1] In February of 1945, Black Boy was a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection, bringing it immediate fame and acclaim.[1] Black Boy was also featured in a list compiled by the Lending Section of the American Library Association labeled “50 Outstanding Books of 1945.”[14] The list, which was compiled by numerous individuals and institutions, acclaims Black Boy as “the author's account of his boyhood [that] is a grim record of frustration, race tension, and suffering.”[14] From 1996-2000, the Round Rock Independent School District board in Texas voted 4-2 against a proposal to remove Richard Wright’s Black Boy from reading lists at local schools, eventually deciding the content of the book was worthy and necessary in schools.[15] In numerous cases of attempted censorship for Black Boy, Richard Wright’s widow, Ellen Wright, stood up and publicly defended the book, claiming that the censorship of Black Boy would be “tantamount to an American tragedy.”[15] Black Boy was most recently challenged in Michigan in 2007 by the Howell High School for distributing explicit materials to minors, a ruling that was quickly overruled by a prosecutor who found that “the explicit passages illustrated a larger literary, artistic, or political message.”[16]

Black Boy has come under fire by numerous states, institutions, and individuals alike. Most petitioners of the book criticize Wright for being anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, overly sexual and obscene, and most commonly, for portraying a grim picture of race relations in America.[17] In 1972, Black Boy was banned in Michigan schools after parents found the content to be overly sexual and generally unsuitable for teens.[16] In 1975, the book was challenged in both Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Tennessee, both places claiming the book was obscene and instigated racial tension.[16] Black Boy was first challenged in New York in 1976 by the board of education of the Island Trees Free School District in New York.[16] It was soon the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case in 1982.[18] Petitioners against the inclusion of Black Boy described the autobiography as "objectionable" and "improper fare for school students."[18] The book was later challenged in Lincoln, Nebraska on accounts of its “corruptive, obscene nature.”[19] In May of 1997, the President of the North Florida Ministerial Alliance condemned the inclusion of Black Boy in Jacksonville’s public schools, claiming the content is not “right for high school students” due to profanity and racial references.[19]

�References[edit]

 * 1) ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h Joyce, Joyce Ann. "Wright, Richard (1908–1960)." African American Writers, edited by Valerie Smith, 2nd ed., vol. 2, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001, pp. 875-894. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX1387200066/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=8e2fb644 . Accessed 3 Apr. 2019.
 * 2) ^ Jump up to:a b c Lystad, Mary. "Richard Wright: Overview." Twentieth-Century Young Adult Writers, edited by Laura Standley Berger, St. James Press, 1994. Twentieth-Century Writers Series. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420008836/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=4832a8a9 . Accessed 1 Apr. 2019.
 * 3) ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h Dykema-VanderArk, Anthony. "Critical Essay on 'Black Boy'." Nonfiction Classics for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Nonfiction Works, edited by David M. Galens, et al., vol. 1, Gale, 2001. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420035601/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=9a7137da . Accessed 1 Apr. 2019.
 * 4) ^ Jump up to:a b c Wright, Richard, 1908-1960,. Black boy : (American hunger) : a record of childhood and youth (1st Perennial Classics edition ed.). New York. ISBN 0060929782. OCLC 39339337.
 * 5) ^ Jump up to:a b c d Adams, Timothy Dow. "Richard Wright: 'Wearing the Mask,'." Novels for Students, edited by Diane Telgen, vol. 1, Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420021254/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=9b9aed85 . Accessed 7 Apr. 2019. Originally published in Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiography, The University of North Carolina Press, 1990, pp. 69-83.
 * 6) ^ Jump up to:a b c d Andrews, William L. "Richard Wright and the African-American Autobiography Tradition." Nonfiction Classics for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Nonfiction Works, edited by David M. Galens, et al., vol. 1, Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420035602/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=3c580a9a . Accessed 7 Apr. 2019. Originally published in Style, vol. 27, no. 2, Summer 1993, pp. 271-282.
 * 7) ^ Poulos, Jennifer H. "'Shouting curses': the politics of 'bad' language in Richard Wright's 'Black Boy.'." The Journal of Negro History, vol. 82, no. 1, 1997, p. 54+. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A20757362/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=2c6cd5b2 . Accessed 8 Apr. 2019.
 * 8) ^ Jump up to:a b c d Stepto, Robert B. "I Thought I Knew These People': Richard Wright & the Afro-American Literary Tradition." Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Sharon R. Gunton, vol. 21, Gale, 1982. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1100003311/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=057e1596 . Accessed 8 Apr. 2019. Originally published in The Massachusetts Review, vol. 18, no. 3, Autumn 1977, pp. 525-541.
 * 9) ^ Porter, Horace A. "The Horror and the Glory: Wright's Portrait of the Artist in Black Boy and American Hunger." Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, edited by Janet Witalec, vol. 136, Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420051191/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=4bf3caca . Accessed 8 Apr. 2019. Originally published in Richard Wright: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. A. Appiah, Amistad, 1993, pp. 316-327.
 * 10) ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Thaddeus, Janice (1985-5). "The Metamorphosis of Richard Wright's Black Boy". American Literature. 57 (2): 199. doi:10.2307/2926062. Check date values in: |date=(help)
 * 11) ^ Noble, Barnes &. "Black Boy|Paperback". Barnes & Noble. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
 * 12) ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., "Note on the Text," pp 407–8 in Richard Wright, Black Boy (American Hunger), The Library of America, 1993.
 * 13) ^ Mitgang, Herbert. "Books of the Times; An American Master and New Discoveries." The New York Times 1 January 1992. Accessed on 14 May 2006.[1].
 * 14) ^ Jump up to:a b "Notable Books List 1945" (PDF). ALA. 1945. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
 * 15) ^ Jump up to:a b Foerstel, Herbert N.. Banned in the U.S.A. : A Reference Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Public Libraries, Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/georgetown/detail.action?docID=3000898.
 * 16) ^ Jump up to:a b c d "Black Boy by Richard Wright". Banned Library. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
 * 17) ^ Plath, Dara (5 February 2015). "Top 10 Banned Books that Changed the Face of Black History". National Coalition Against Censorship. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
 * 18) ^ Jump up to:a b "Island Trees Sch. Dist. v. Pico by Pico 457 U.S. 853 (1982)". Justia. Retrieved 30 September 2015.
 * 19) ^ Jump up to:a b "Black Boy by Richard Wright". Banned Library. Retrieved 24 April 2019.