Black Boy by Richard Wright
Richard's goals and dreams are born from glimmers of life seen fleetingly through a bramble of obstacles, disappointments and discouragements. The women and men in his life do not represent an active stifling so much as an archetypal mediocrity, which forms a backdrop in stark contrast to the striving, passionate, and active life Richard wants to lead.
Although he has biological progenitors, Richard has no real parents. He learns nearly everything in his life from non-relatives or by trial and error, with the one exception of his mother teaching him to read after learning that he knows his numbers. After his kin discover what he has learned from the saloon, the schoolyard, and the street, they beat him as if the severity of the switch can make up for the intensity of their neglect.
In the absence of caring adults to raise him, he raises himself with input provided only by his environment. By the time Miss Simon tries to encourage him at the orphanage school, he is so emotionally timid, he psychologically cannot respond to her encouragement.
He is interested in different things than his mother, Granny, Aunt Jody, Aunt Addie, Aunt Maggie, or Grandpa and his uncles because they have not been interested enough to know him. The men in his family seem no more apt at understanding Richard. For example, he explains to Grandpa that Addie has mistakenly accused him of eating in class, but he turns a deaf ear. Richard's desperate pent-up craving for a reciprocal, collaborative relationship with anybody is finally and powerfully expressed in his utter delight at Ella's story of Bluebeard, the root of his love for literature.
Richard learns more from the misunderstandings than the actual input of his adult kin. The adults in his life do not encourage or inspire him because they can't. Even if they were inclined to, they don't know how.
Bibliography
Wirght, Richard. Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth. New Yourk: Harper & Brothers, 1945.
