SOURCE: “‘Whirling out of the Dance …’: Three Autobiographies Written in Exile,” in Griot, Vol. 13, No. 2, Fall, 1994, pp. 42-6.

In the following essay, Bass finds many similarities among American Richard Wright's Black Boy, South African Ezekiel Mphahlele's Down Second Avenue, and Caribbean George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin despite the different nationalities of the writers.

In Metaphors of Self James Olney says, “It is the great virtue of autobiography as I see it to offer us understanding that is finally not of someone else but of ourselves” (x). However, what we can expect to understand about ourselves is not always clear, particularly if the autobiographer is of a different race or gender and from a different culture.

This author read the autobiographical narratives by Richard Wright, Ezekiel Mphahlele, and George Lamming for the reason Olney suggests: to understand growing up black, and in this case, male, in...