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Black Boy | |
Description
Black Boy is a classic American autobiography, a subtly crafted narrative of Richard Wright's journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. An enduring story of one young man's coming of age during a particular time and place, Black Boy remains a seminal text in our history about what it means to be a man, black, and Southern in America.
One winter morning in the long-ago, four-year-old days of my One for more standing before a fireplace, wanting my hands over a mound of glowing coals, listening to the wind whistle past the house outside. All morning my mother had been scolding me, telling me to keep still, warning me that I must make no noise. And I was angry, fretful, and impatient. In the next room, Granny lay ill and under the day and night care of a doctor and I knew that I would be punished if I did not obey. I crossed restlessly to the window and pushed back the long fluffy white curtains-which I had been forbidden to touch-and looked yearningly out into the empty street. I was dreaming of running and playing and shouting, but the vivid image of Granny's old, white, wrinkled, grim face, framed by a halo of tumbling black hair, lying upon a huge feather pillow, made me afraid. The house was quiet. Behind me my brother-a year younger than I was playing placidly upon the floor with a toy. A bird wheeled past the window and I greeted it with a glad shout. "You better hush," my brother said. "You shut up," I said. My mother stepped briskly into the room and closed the door behind her. She came to me and shook her finger in my face. "You stop that yelling, you hear?" she whispered. "You knowGranny's sick and you better keep quiet!" I hung my head and sulked. She left and I ached with boredom.
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