black
grey
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But the color of a Negro’s skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target

Richard Wright

We invented a medium of exchange, mined silver and gold, made pottery and cutlery, we fashioned tools and utensils of brass, bronze, ivory, quartz, and granite.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Brass Bronze exchange Fashion Granite Made Medium Silver Utensil
Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Book Clinched Environment Fail Nourish Support
But to feel that there was feeling denied me, that the very breath of life itself was beyond my reach, that more than anything else hurt, wounded me. I had a new hunger.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Anything Beyond Breath Denied Else Feel Hunger New
You usually take it for granted and think you know us, but our history is far stranger than you suspect, and we are not what we seem.
RICHARD WRIGHT

City Grant History Pavement Seem Stranger Suspect Take Think
I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak,
RICHARD WRIGHT

Bleak Environment Happen Made Thing Vbare
We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like livin’ in jail.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Black Country Jail Living People Thing White
I could think of nothing. And, slowly, it was upon exactly that nothingness that my mind began to dwell, that constant sense of wanting without having, of being hated without reason.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Began Constant Could Hate Mind Nothingness Reason Sense Slowly Upon Want
there are times when life’s ends are so raveled that reason and sense cry out that we stop and gather them together again before we can proceed
RICHARD WRIGHT

Again Cry End Gather Reason Revealed Sense Stop Together
Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Integrity Men Realization Self Strive
Pity can purge us of hostility and arouse feelings of identification with the characters, but it can also be a consoling reassurance which leads us to believe that we have understood, and that, in pitying, we have even done something to right a wrong.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Arouse Believe Character Feeling Hostility Identification Right Something Wrong
Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Day Dope Drug Love Reading
I was not leaving the south to forget the south, but so that some day I might understand it
RICHARD WRIGHT

Day Forget Learn Leaving might Some South Understand
Reluctantly, he comes to the conclusion that to account for his book is to account for his life.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Account Book Conclusion Life Reluctantly
The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Art Artist Halloween Imagination Monster
The more closely the author thinks of why he wrote, the more he comes to regard his imagination as a kind of self-generating cement which glued his facts together, and his emotions as a kind of dark and obscure designer of those facts.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Author Book Closely Come Dark Emotion Fact Imagination Kind More Regard Think Writing Wrote
And they do not know why; they are powerless pawns in a blind play of social forces.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Blind Force Know Pawn Play Powerless Social

But the color of a Negro’s skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target

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But the color of a Negro’s skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target

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Popular Authors

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