Black boy

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Black Boy is the autobiography of the American writer Richard Wright , published in 1945 by HarperCollins . The German translation with the title “Ich Negerjunge: the story of a childhood and youth”, published in 1947 by Steinberg Verlag Zurich , was done by Rudolf Frank under the pseudonym Harry Rosbaud .

The book was the template for an American TV documentary "Richard Wright - Black Boy" from 1995 about the author.

HarperCollins Verlag sold 195,000 copies of the work in the original edition. The sold circulation of the Book of the Month Club , a book club , is given as 351,000.

In the United States , the book is widely read in school.

content

Wright grew up in Jackson and Arkansas . The years are marked by the racism of the American South and the family. In this environment he learns about violence as a perfectly accepted means of communication. The father leaves the family for another woman and the mother collapses under the burden after the uncle's murder.

The author describes himself in this novel as an outcast. After his mother can no longer look after him and his brother, he comes to his grandmother. She is a devout seven-day Adventist and Richard comes into conflict with her because his grandmother's lack of a religious relationship is noticeable. There are also conflicts with his aunt and uncle, because his agnosticism and his only escape from violence, hunger and human isolation, namely reading cheap booklets , are met with incomprehension. Fictional things are considered the devil's work by his relatives. During this time, the only ally is his sick mother.

He fights the omnipresent hunger with work and criminal activities. Wright begins writing and manages to fit a narrative into the local black newspaper.

After finishing school, he begins to flee north . First, Wright stops in Memphis . There Richard gets to know the world of literature and then continues his escape. Arrived in Chicago , he brings something of the spirit of the south with him as a rural person.

American hunger

The second part of the book (omitted from the original edition at the request of the Book of the Month Club ) deals with Wright's experiences with the Communist Party of the United States and was only published posthumously in 1977 under the title American Hunger .

literature

  • Richard Wright: Black Boy. A record of childhood and youth . Random House, London 2000, ISBN 0-09-928506-1 .
  • Richard Wright: Black Boy. Report of a childhood and youth ("Black Boy"). Dtv, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-423-01676-0 (translated by Kurt H. Hansen)
  • Richard Wright: I negro boy. The story of a childhood and youth ("Black Boy"). Fischer, Frankfurt / M. 1964 (translated by Rudolf Frank).
  • Harold Bloom (Ed.): Richard Wright's "Black Boy" . Chelsea House, New York 2006, ISBN 0-7910-8585-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Richard Wright: I Negro Boy: The Story of a Childhood and Adolescence. Steinberg Verlag, Zurich, 1947
  2. ↑ IMDB entry: Richard Wright: Black Boy
  3. ^ The New York Times. Books of The Times; An American Master And New Discoveries, 1992
  4. ↑ California Newsreel "... Native Son and Black Boy, were runaway best sellers which are still mainstays of high school and college literature and composition classes."

Web links