In his memoir, Black Boy (1945), Richard Wright shows the fundamental role literature plays in his life. While Wright describes many challenges throughout the work, literature proves to be a unique source of empowerment.

Magic

Through Ella, a young black school teacher, Wright experiences the magic of the folktale. Ella boards at the home of Wright’s grandparents, and as a child, Wright often wonders about the books Ella has. When he finally finds enough courage to approach Ella, she tells him the story of Bluebeard and His Seven Wives, a folktale by the 17th century, French author, Charles Perrault. Wright recalls:

As she spoke, reality changed, the look of things altered, and the world became peopled with magical presences…Ella’s whispered story of deception and murder had been the first experience in my life that had elicited from me a total emotional response. (pp. 39-40)

Ella’s story completely enlivens Wright. Her words help him exercise his ability to look at the world from a different point of view, and foster Wright’s own imagination and creativity. Ella shares with Wright the fantastic world of words and stories.

Adventure

A boy at school introduces Wright to pulp magazines - adventures on paper. To make money for food, and to find reading material, Wright takes his classmate’s advice, and sells a weekly newspaper. The newspaper comes with a magazine supplement that features thrilling stories, such as Riders of the Purple Sage, an early 20th century Western by Zane Grey. Wright describes his interest in the magazine’s stories:

…I would go to my room and lock the door and revel in outlandish exploits of outlandish men in faraway, outlandish cities. For the first time in my life I became aware of the life of the modern world, of vast cities, and I was claimed by it; I loved it. (p. 129)

The magazine stories help Wright access an infinite number of environments, characters, and dramas from his own room. Reading allows Wright to transcend the limitations of his own reality, and enjoy an adventure all by himself.

Culture

As an eighteen-year-old, Wright comes across a white man’s passionate criticism of American culture. Wright first finds an article that condemns the writer H.L. Mencken in The Commercial Appeal. Distrustful of the Memphis newspaper, Wright wonders who H.L. Mencken could be. Wright obtains Mencken’s A Book of Prefaces, a collection of essays that offers an oppositional view of the United States. Wright explains Mencken’s effect on him:

…this man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club. Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for here they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as a weapon? (p. 248)

Wright is amazed that a white man so boldly denounces many of the dominant values of the United States, values Wright also questions. He admires Mencken’s writing style, and realizes that words can be powerful tools. A Book of Prefaces inspires Wright to express his own ideas just as effectively.

Politics

When he arrives in Chicago in 1927, Wright discovers revolutionary works that advocate for the poor and oppressed, including Joseph Stalin’s The National and Colonial Question. Wright communicates what good he finds in Stalin’s work:

Stalin’s book showed how diverse minorities could be welded into unity, and I regarded it as a most politically sensitive volume that revealed a new way of looking upon lost and beaten peoples…I had read how these forgotten folk had been encouraged to keep their old cultures, to see in their ancient customs meanings and satisfactions as deep as those contained in supposedly superior ways of living. (p. 335)

In Stalin’s work, Wright empathizes with the suffering of Russian peasants, and recognizes the universality of injustice. He appreciates the idea that wisdom exists in every culture, and that society can celebrate and support cultural differences.

Wright experiences novel emotions and convictions when he engages various genres from around the world. Despite his often bleak reality, the intellectual wealth Wright gains from literature sustains him.

References

Wright, R. (2020). Black Boy. HarperCollins. (Original work published 1945).