Is anybody here familiar with, "Black Boy", by Richard Wright?

Question

My daughter is reading this book for her Lit&Comp class. She's read excerpts to me. It's my opinion that Richard Wright was an early version of James Frey in that, he can tell a good story, but it smacks of embellishment.
He wrote it in 1945, giving a 37 yrs old man's insight into what he "experienced" as a boy.
I went thru some serious stuff as a kid, but I surely don't recall them as clearly as Wright does his own.
Anybody care to weigh in on this?

Dramatically recalling something is quite different than recalling how one felt as a five year old watching butterflies, or a sunset; which is just what Richard does in the early part of his book.
He waxes eloquently about his feelings and thoughts which no child could recall at that age.

Answer 1

ALL memoirs and autobiographies are, to a certain extent, fictitious. Memories fail, and retellings exaggerate. Therefore, when I write childhood memories, I always label them as fiction.

That way I can also reconstruct dialogue; though, of course, I don't remember exactly what people said in any of my childhood memories, I do remember what they talked like and how they sounded to me. So I tell an authentic story, admittedly fictionalized.

I have no doubt but there's a degree of such "fictionalizing" in Black Boy. That's different from changing basic facts or making up whole incidents.

On the other hand, you should be aware that childhood memories differ from one person to another and one time to another. I have specific memories from a time before I was three years old. I know I am right about my age, for we moved away from that house when I was three; yet I loved that old house, I remember it well (though it has long since been demolished), and I have vivid memories of things that happened there (and very genuine memories of how I felt): a pony bit the end off one of my fingers, I followed a dog away from home and got lost, my brother gave me a tricycle for Christmas and it was too big for me, friends promised to take me to vacation Bible school and then didn't show up, I played under the front porch with my dog Snowball . . . .

There are other years in my life that are almost a complete blank; for example, from the age of 7 to 9, when my mother was expecting not to live and I was having to stay with other relatives.

In any case, I think there are any number of reasons NOT to classify Wright with James Frey, not the least of which is the quality of his writing. Real memories, or fictionalized, they tell a true story.

Answer 2

Perhaps, but to the extent that there may have been embellishment, I am more likely to ascribe it to Wright's attempt to dramatize a point than to the crass commercial appeal evident in Frey's deception. (Certainly, Wright wasn't aiming to become rich from that book. Frey, on the other hand...)

Besides, it doesn't have to be conscious embellishment. People often remember things much more dramatically than the events actually were.