“A yearning for a kind of consciousness”: Black boy and the aesthetic solution

Abstract

The narrator in Richard Wright's Black Boy uses language to create a sense of self‐consciousness. Language functions for the narrator as an aesthetic counter to southern racial oppression. Through a process that includes the avid reading of literature, speaking as valedictorian at his graduation, and writing short stories, “black boy” interpellates a new kind of subject for himself: a fully conscious, autonomous individual. The narrator's aesthetic creation of consciousness is mirrored in the consciousness of Wright's authorial act, an act that privileges an aesthetic truth over historical accuracy by privileging aesthetics as a means towards producing an “I.”