Memoir/Biography has been a hard category for
Bartleby and the Scriveners. However, after considering a number of books, we've decided to go with Richard Wright's groundbreaking and stunning memoir
Black Boy.
Black Boy is the full story of Richard Wright's life, ranging from his fraught early life, his years in school, his early years as a writer all the way to his later friendship with H.L. Mencken and his membership in the Communist party.
Black Boy is in two parts--subtitled "American Dream" and "American Hunger"--and as a full story with those parts it has a wonderful narrative unity, and becomes a vital paean to the American Left. However, only the first part was published originally, as the publisher (The Book-of-the-Month Club) objected to the leftist content of the second half of the book. Mencken was a major influence on Wright, as were Gertrude Stein and others among the white modernist set that preceded Wright by a generation. But his style is far from derivative, and this is a book that though it is accessible on a first read, bears reading and re-reading. It's truly a masterwork.