FROM THE COVER:
In this once sensational, now classic, autobiography, Richard Wright tells with unforgettable fury and eloquence what he thought and felt as a black boy in the Jim Crow South.

Wright grew up with poverty, hunger, fear, and hatred. He lied, stole, and lashed out at those around him; he killed and tortured animals; at six he was a drunkard, hanging about the taverns. Surly, brutal, cold, suspicious, and self-pitying, he was surrounded on the one side by whites who were either indifferent to him or pitying or cruel, and on the other by blacks who resented anyone trying to rise above the common lot.

Wright's powerful account is at once an indictment, an unashamed confession, and a poignant and disturbing record.

"If his early years were thus doubly cruel, his experience has given his book an extra dimension, and he has observed his family and his race with the same unsparing vision that he has turned upon the white man and the world he has made." --The New Republic

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