Inside this Issue - Jefferson County Public Schools

Nothing Like Him
By Chastity White
Black Boy by Richard Wright. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1940. pps. 504
Richard Wright remains a genuine writer as he composes another masterpiece of historical fiction. The
book, Black Boy, is an elegantly crafted narrative of Richard Wright’s journey from “innocence to experience in the
Jim Crow South.” This book is about one young man’s coming of age during a precise time and place, a Black man
living in Southern America. Richard always wondered “if clean, positive tenderness, love, honor, loyalty, and the
capacity to remember, were native with a man.”
Richard was a very curious character, he burned down his home and his family had to move to another city.
When they moved into their new home, Richard had to experience life without a father. His mother asked him one
day, “Where’s your father?” Richard said that he had always wanted his father to leave, but he never realized that
“...his absence would mean that there would be no food.”. He also tells us what life was like for Negroes,
“...Negroes has never been allowed to catch the full spirit of Western civilization, that they lived somehow in it but pic
of it...”
The story draws the reader further in when Richard pictured his father on a plantation and he tried to talk to
him, but he knew that there was nothing that he had to say to his father. “...a quarter of a century during which my mind and consciousness
had become so greatly and violently altered when I tried to talk to him. I realized that, though ties of blood made us kin, though I could see
a shadow of my face in his...forever we were strangers...” Although he didn’t talk to his father, he still forgave him; and forgiving someone
that really hurt you can be extremely hard. Richard eventually learned to forgive his father.
Wright is well-known for his historical fiction books dealing with life in Jim Crow America based on the character, Bigger
Thomas, trying to navigate his way through life in a racist America. In these works of historical fiction, he gives the reader an insight on
how life was for African-Americans during the 1900’s. The story lines between Wright’s Native Son and his Black Boy may seem
redundant because they both deal with what life is like growing up in Jim Crow America, although each teaches a different aspect of that
live. They are exciting reads.
Richard Wright maneuvers the reader to see what life was like in America, and in the South for African Americans, and what life
was like for those African-American children who did not have a father. He makes a clear statement that the way Blacks were treated, and
the way they had to live, should not be dismissed in any kind of manner. That they are capable of making it through life, regardless of how
they are treated. But as you learn in this book, not all Black children are without fathers in their lives, many Black children do have fathers
or have father figures. This historical fiction about life in Jim Crow America keeps the reader interested from page to page.
The Way It Talks
By: Marcel Williams
Always Outnumbered Always Outgunned, by Walter Mosley. Washington Square Press. 1998.
Always Outnumbered Always Outgunned is a book that has a very unique sense of style.
It is very real. Its dialogue talks like real people talk. It doesn’t sound like something made up, it
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sounds like real conversations. There is a lot of slang in it, and it speaks to teenagers and lets us
understand what is going on. It sounds just like the way teenagers talk to their friends and the way
their friends talk to them. For example, “I asked you a question, boy. Ain’t yo’ mamma told you
t’be civil?” As you can see, the book doesn’t use proper English and you wouldn’t talk to
someone that way in a professional field of work. You have to know a little street talk, because if
you don’t then it’s going to be hard for you to understand what they are saying. This dialogue is a
great way to show real life situations. If you were to actually read this book it would seem real.
This book is similar to the book called The Right Mistake, another one of Walter Mosley’s
books. This book has the same style as Always Outnumbered Always Outgunned because of the
dialogue in it. They both have realistic dialogue, and even though the book is fiction, it seems like its non fiction just
because of the way that the dialogue is used. In both these books the problems seem so real, they seem like
something that you would see in everyday life.
The theme of this book is when you get a second chance at life, then you should take that opportunity to
make the best of it. Through out this book it describes what the main character did to get convicted, but you have to
read the book to find out what exactly happens. Another thing it teaches is that you shouldn’t let your past affect
your future, and if you get a second chance don’t let it go to waste because it might be you last time to do something
right with your life. As the old saying goes, if life gives you lemons, then make lemonade. This is what Socrates, the
main character, did with his second chance in life.
The quality of this book is very first-class. It has a lot of good things about it, especially the dialogue. The
dialogue is what brings the book together because without the dialogue, the book wouldn’t make as much sense as it
does. The dialogue also helps develop the characters.