Black Boy Essay, Research Paper
Dear Richard Wright,
Hi, this is one of the millions of your admirers who love and read your book, “Black Boy.” In your book you have written about your life and about different and hard situations that you had to face with bare hands and no support almost at all. I must say that it is very courageous to write about yourself. Many people are afraid to do so because it reveals all of their insides and outs. It was horrifying to read about all the humiliation and disrespect to black people that white men treated all of you with.
I have millions of questions to ask you, but I will try to be laconic. First question is obvious: where have you gotten all the strength, power, and inclination to survive and achieve those altitudes that were nearly unreachable in your position? The atmosphere where you have lived, that pressure that has surrounded you from top to bottom, were not that all too much to bear? It seems to me that I would not be able to overcome all that.
I think that it was awful and terrible when your father left you and your family to the mercy of fate. In addition to discrimination, now you and your family were left hungry, and that I believe will bury in you for the rest of your life. It is hard to imagine for me what you went through, like starvation and the loss of father, but I can feel what it has been like. When I got to know that your mom was paralyzed and became crippled for life, it was a tremendous shock to me, but mostly to you. It just cannot stay a second in my mind seeing my parents invalid or disabled. How could you live with that?
When you made friends in one place and had to move from time to time to other place, how were you able to manage that? It is hard to forget old friends and to make new ones in the environment that is totally new to you. I can relate this to myself: when I moved to the U. S., it was a while before I made friends, real friends.
Another thing I can not understand is how could your grandmother and all of your uncles and aunts have treated you like a pig, or a futile rag? I know, you maybe did not follow some of the rules of your grandmother s house, but their blood flows in your veins! It is completely outrageous. I appreciate your ability to somehow avoid and stay away from them, and I understand your mother too, she had no power and ability to help and protect you because she had neither money nor place to live.
I remember one circumstance where you worked at one place, and white people made you fight with your friend, who worked on the opposite side of the street, for money just to have fun. It is disgraceful and abnormal for people to even think about that. It is sick.
Fortunately, many people have hearts. You have acquainted with nice, compassionate people when you had just come to North. They offered you home and food to at least stay alive.
There is one major thing that I admire about you the most – your ability to study, to gain knowledge and become a respectable figure in the North while struggling and managing to survive in the severe environment that occupied you. There are not many people of your kind, not many people are capable of fulfilling their dreams and desires. You belong to a special category. I think that to overcome and achieve what you have achieved requires control of emotions, feelings, and a sparkle that lights the beginning of fulfilling one s dream.
You serve as an example for many of us today. Your desire inspires and pushes to achieve many things that seem impossible even to dream about. Your dedication to acquire knowledge creates that sparkle that once was created in you and helps us to achieve our goals.
Thank you for everything,