Richard Wright's Essay 'A Visit To The Library'

The personal essay “A Visit to the Library” (1945), written by Richard Wright suggests that reading can change the way racism is interpreted and its connection to the personal life of the Negros in the south. Wright supports his theses by explaining and giving details about his experience with co-workers, a librarian, and other white men. Wright purpose was to let people know that reading was important in order to be able to help understand racism and why it is so frowned on in the south.

Racism is an issue that blacks face, and have faced throughout history directly and indirectly. Ralph Ellison has done a great job in demonstrating the effects of racism on individual identity through a black narrator. Throughout the story, Ellison provides several examples of what the narrator faced in trying to make his-self visible and acceptable in the white culture. Ellison engages the reader so deeply in the occurrences through the narrator’s agony, confusion, and ambiguity. In order to understand the narrators plight, and to see things through his eyes, it is important to understand that main characters of the story which contributes to his plight as well as the era in which the story takes place.

The memoir “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston, was first published in 1928, and recounts the situation of racial discrimination and prejudice at the time in the United States. The author was born into an all-black community, but was later sent to a boarding school in Jacksonville, where she experienced “race” for the first time. Hurston not only informs the reader how she managed to stay true to herself and her race, but also inspires the reader to abandon any form of racism in their life. Especially by including Humor, Imagery, and Metaphors, the author makes her message very clear: Everyone is equal.

“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.” –Richard Wright, Black Boy. The author suffered and lived through an isolated society, where books were the only option for him to escape the reality of the world. Wright wrote this fictionalized book about his childhood and adulthood to portray the dark and cruel civilization and to illustrate the difficulties that blacks had, living in a world run by whites.

Douglass and Wright both experience similar reactions to their newly gained knowledge. After finding access to a library, Wright begins to read and learn more about different perspectives and the way others think. He eventually realizes, through his readings, that he is hurt by what he learns as is evident in quotation “But to feel that there were feelings denied me, that the very breath of life itself was beyond my reach, that more than anything hurt, wounded me,”

The discriminating social stratification in 1950’s developed a set of servile behavior on the blacks. They were thought to be inferior to whites, and were treated accordingly. Moreover, different parts of the country had various ranges of sensitivities while dealing with the blacks. For example, in Mississippi things were particularly tense after the Parker lynch case. No black man would dare look into any white man’s eyes in fear of the repercussions. On the bus, a man warned Griffin to watch himself closely until he caught onto Mississippi’s ways. In an extreme case like this, it was vital to learn about their roles and behave accordingly.

This theme helps illuminate how black people came to be treated in America both when slavery existed and beyond into today’s society. The theme that black people are disposable bodies within American society. Because of the tradition of treating black people as objects or whose value strictly came from their ability to make profit, the idea of what it means to be black in America is imbedded in the danger of losing one’s body. Although slavery has ended, the racism remains as a violence inflicted on black people’s bodies. Coates is more than happy to emphasize that racism is an instinctive practice.

Mrs. Auld being so inclined to do so shows how pivotal reading is to white’s independence. Before her marriage Mrs. Auld had been “dependent upon her own industry for a living,” self-reliance had even begun to infiltrate the sweet, virtuous young women that were not included in the American Adam of the time either (255). The attempt at educating Douglass for the brief period gave a slave more than white men of the time would have dreamed of. Douglass “had [been] given the inch, and no precaution could prevent [him] from taking the ell” (260). He continued his education by himself, stealing spelling books and reading newspapers. The goal of reading and writing that he gives himself and strives to achieve for the rest of his childhood and teen years is accomplished because of his self-reliance, showing that like many Americans of the day that nothing, not even a whipping, could stand in his

Education is something that is often taken for granted in this day and age. Kids these days rebel against going to school all together. In the essays “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie and “Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass, we learn of two young men eager for knowledge. Both men being minors and growing up in a time many years apart, felt like taking how to read and write into their own hands, and did so with passion. On the road to a education, both Alexie and Douglass discover that education is not only pleasurable, but also painful. Alexie and Douglass both grew up in different times, in different environments, and in different worlds. They both faced different struggles and had different achievements, but they were not all that different. Even though they grew up in different times they both had the same views on how important of education was. They both saw education as freedom and as a way of self-worth even though they achieved their education in different ways. They both had a strong mind and a strong of sense of self-motivation.

In Douglass’s memoir, he states, “Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read”(Douglass, 2015, pp.130). His desire and determination to read and write at whatever cost of trouble discloses the reality of the consequences he is willing to take. In his memoir, he develops friendships with some white kids. He later quotes, “As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. With their kindly aid, obtained at different times ad in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read”(Douglass, 2015, pp.132). Although formal education was nonexistent, he managed to achieve a desire of his. Douglass strived in learning to read, but he also missed out on

"Whenever I thought of the essential bleakness of black life in America, I knew that Negroes had never been allowed to catch the full spirit of Western civilization, that they lived somehow in it but not of it. And when I brooded upon the cultural barrenness of black life, I wondered if clean, positive tenderness, love, honor, loyalty, and the capacity to remember were native with man. I asked myself if these human qualities were not fostered, won, struggled and suffered for, preserved in ritual from one generation to another." This passage written in Black Boy, the autobiography of Richard Wright shows the disadvantages of Black people in the 1930's. A man of many words, Richard Wrights is the father of the modern

Wright was one of the first American writers to confront racism and discrimination (Fabre 102). Through the book Eight Men, which includes this story, Wright alienated impoverished black men who

In the passage “The Library Card,” Richard Wright describes how he started to read when he living in the South as an African American and how the books changed his attitude towards the racism. Occasionally, Wright interested in an article which was a furious denunciation of Mencken, and he wanted to know more about Mencken to figure out why the whites hated him. In order to read the book, Wright decided to borrow it from the library, but unfortunately, he did not have the library card due to the segregation. Afterwards, he borrowed the card from Mr. Falk, and got the books. Once he read the book, he was shocked by the writing style and became fascinated with it. The more he read, the more he knows about the world, and he realizes his life

“The Library Card,” by Richard Wright is a strong essay on how books can affect and influence readers. Richard Wright writes that his first experience of the real world is accomplished through novels. He read an article criticizing H.L. Mencken and it tempted him to read some of his books. The article labeled Mencken as “a fool.” Wright wanted to know what this man had done to cause such hatred against him. “I wondered what on earth this Mencken had done to call down upon him the scorn of the South. The only people I had ever heard denounced in the South were Negroes, and this man was not a Negro,” (pg.319) Wright writes that tells us that the South was filled with racism and hatred among the whites and blacks. Mencken must have had ideas

Richard Wright’s memoir Black Boy (American Hunger): A Record of Childhood and Youth recounts the author’s personal experience growing up as an African American male in the Jim Crow South, as well as his initial years in the North in the late 1920s. While it is a personal account of one man’s life in this time period, Wright’s memoir also sheds light on the broader role of black men in American society in the early twentieth century, particularly with respect to race, gender, and class relations. By no accident, insight on these relations can be gleaned from the title of Wright’s memoir itself. I argue that Wright chose the provocative title Black Boy (American Hunger): A Record of Childhood and Youth in order to both utilize shock