In A Nutshell
Gather around, Shmoopers. Put on your thinking caps and buckle your seatbelts, because we’re going on a trip in the Wayback Machine. Time: 1945. Place: The US of A. But something is… different.
Just like today, the United States of 1945 was a diverse land. But if you opened the newspaper, you'd see a different story. Politicians, journalists, models, even small business owners: they’re all a whiter shade of pale. A black president? Fat chance. There isn’t even a black Disney Princess (although it’s worth pointing out that the US got a black president before it got a black princess).
So imagine how the public felt when Black Boy was released in 1945. Richard Wright’s story about a young boy from the South struggling to grow up and become a writer in a world that constantly tries to crush his dreams hit the literary world like the eighth, undiscovered Harry Potter. It spent four months at the top of the best seller’s list, and was the fourth best selling novel at the end of 1945. With a bump from the Oprah-like Book-of-the-Month Club, everyone was reading Wright’s words.
Before the Book-of-the-Month Club agreed to give it that boost, though, Wright had to make some changes. The entire second section was nixed, along with some "obscene" parts from the first section. Mentions of the Communist Party, in which Wright was an active member? All gone. Suggestions that the North was not the Promised Land for black people? Also axed. The 1945 version of Black Boy was a much more cheerful book than Wright originally meant it to be.
Even in its bowdlerized form, Black Boy was a favorite of both fancy literary critics and regular folk like us Shmoopers. Wright’s literary skills, as well as his honest portrayal of the life of black Americans, won him plenty of admirers—and plenty of money.
When the complete manuscript was published in 1991 (thirty-one years after Wright died in 1960), readers were in for a nice surprise. Turns out that Wright had mad philosophy skills in addition to impressive literary credentials. With its second half intact, the book is about much more than the personal experiences of one boy growing up in the racist South. It’s also about every individual’s struggle to find a meaningful life.