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Article: The Power of Blackness: Richard Wright Re-Writes Moby-Dick.
- Article from:
- African American Review
- Article date:
- December 22, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 African American Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In his autobiography Black Boy (1945), Richard Wright describes the desperate hunger for books which characterized his boyhood and the diverse subterfuges he devised in order to satisfy it. A century earlier, Frederick Douglass, as if anticipating Wright in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), had revealed that a black boy, in a racist society, would have to resort to duplicitous means if he yearned to read. Reading proved liberating for both the young Douglass and the young Wright, since it provided concepts and narratives which confirmed and illuminated their experiences. As a consequence, they became insatiable readers, and as biographers and literary ...