SOURCE: Porter, Horace A. “The Horror and the Glory: Wright's Portrait of the Artist in Black Boy and American Hunger.” In Richard Wright: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, pp. 316-27. New York: Amistad, 1993.

In the following essay, Porter suggests that Black Boy and American Hunger should be read in order, viewing the two autobiographies as a portrait of the artist.

As the curtain falls on the final page of American Hunger, the continuation of Richard Wright's autobiography, Black Boy, he is alone in his “narrow room, watching the sun sink slowly in the chilly May sky.” Having just been attacked by former Communist associates as he attempted to march in the May Day parade, he ruminates about his life. He concludes that all he has after living in both Mississippi and Chicago, are “words and a dim knowledge...