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Appealing To The Middlebrow Reader: Changes Made To Richard Wright's Black Boy, Donald R. Hatcher

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

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 …