Wright describes his youth in the South: Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, and his eventual move to Chicago, where he establishes his writing career and becomes involved with the Communist Party.

Black Boy gained high acclaim in the United States because of Wright's honest and profound depiction of racism in America.

[2] Richard Wright's family spent much of their lives in deep poverty, enduring hunger and illness, and frequently moving around the South, and finally north, in search of a better life.

[2] When he was seventeen, he left Jackson to find work in Memphis where he became heavily involved in literary groups and publications and expanded on his use of words as the weapon "to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for the life that gnaws in us" that is seen in Black Boy.

[1] Wright claims that he chose to write about the experiences referenced in Black Boy in an effort to "look squarely at his life, to build a bridge of words between him and the world".

After his father deserts his family, young Wright is shuffled back and forth between his sick mother, his fanatically religious grandmother, and various maternal aunts, uncles and orphanages attempting to take him in.

He finds these circumstances generally unjust and fights attempts to quell his intellectual curiosity and potential as he dreams of moving north and becoming a writer.

Wright's aspirations of escaping racism in his move North are quickly disillusioned as he encounters similar prejudices and oppressions amidst the people in Memphis, prompting him to continue his journeys towards Chicago.

He holds many jobs, most of them consisting of menial tasks: he washes floors during the day and reads Proust and medical journals at night.

At this time, his family is still suffering in poverty, his mother is disabled by a stroke, and his relatives constantly interrogate him about his atheism and "pointless" reading.

Wright ends the book by resolving to use his writing as a way to start a revolution: asserting that everyone has a "hunger" for life that needs to be filled.

[6] Given Black Boy’s emphasis on racial inequality in America, many of the motifs refer to the lingering aspects of slave narratives in present day.

These motifs include violence, religion, starvation, familial unity and lack thereof, literacy, and the North Star as a guide towards freedom.

[1] Throughout Black Boy, this skepticism of religion is present as Richard regards Christianity as being primarily based on a general inclusion in a group rather than incorporating any meaningful, spiritual connection to God.

[3] The general state of poverty and hunger that Wright endures reflects, to a lesser degree, similar obstacles that slaves faced.

Lastly, Wright's focus on literacy as a weapon towards personal freedom also reflects the efforts of many slaves hoping to free themselves through the ability to read and write.

The most general impact of Black Boy is shown through Wright's efforts to bring light to the complexities of race relations in America, both the seen and unseen.

[1] Black Boy was also featured in a list compiled by the Lending Section of the American Library Association labeled "50 Outstanding Books of 1945".

[13] The list, which was compiled by numerous individuals and institutions, acclaims Black Boy as "the author's account of his boyhood [that] is a grim record of frustration, race tension, and suffering".

Most petitioners of the book criticize Wright for being anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, overly sexual and obscene, and most commonly, for portraying a grim picture of race relations in America.