Richard Wright's Black Boy (American Hunger) A Casebook

This casebook gathers together the most important critical responses to Richard Wright's autobiography. It includes a 1945 interview with Richard Wright, contemporary reviews of Black Boy written by W.E.B. Du Bois, Lionel Trilling, Mary McCarthy, and Ralph Ellison, and eight critical essays. These essays address a range of topics including the circumstances of the book's original publication in 1945; the relationship between the novel and Wright's actual biography; the African-American autobiographical tradition; the influences of various writers and literary movements on Black Boy ; and the impact of African-American vernacular and oral performance on Wright's autobiography.

William L. Andrews is E. Maynard Adams Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Douglas Taylor is Assistant Professor of English and African American studies at the University of Texas at Austin.