Appealing to the Middlebrow Reader: Changes Made to Richard Wright's Black Boy

This thesis focuses on Richard Wright's autobiography Black Boy (American Hunger) A Record of Childhood and Youth. The book's original format underwent a couple of major changes in order to be accepted by The Book-of-the-Month Club, which were the elimination of the entire second half dealing with Wright's time in the North and the rewriting of the end of the first half in order to give closure to the shortened book. In my thesis, I will discuss these changes in detail and explain how these changes undermined Wright's original intentions. Furthermore, I will show how The Book-of-the-Month- Club's influence affected the many readers of Wright's book.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts in English (M.A.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis (open access)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Department of Literature and Philosophy

Year dc:date.available

2011

Author dc:creator

• Hatcher, Donald R.

Contributors dc:contributor

• David Dudley
• Richard Flynn

• ETD
• Richard Wright
• North
• South
• Black
• White
• Boy
• African American
• Book-of-the-month club
• Revising
• Editing
• Dorothy Canfield Fisher
• Native son

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/183

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu:etd-1183