Eight Men, the collection in which “Big Black Good Man” first appeared, was published after Wright’s death and contains some of his last writing. The volume is not considered to be among Wright’s most important work, and within the volume, “Big Black Good Man” is not considered to be among the strongest stories.

Most critics were disappointed with Eight Men when it first appeared, judging the stories inferior to Wright’s earlier fiction. One exception was Irving Howe, according to an article by Yoshinobu Hakutani in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 102, American Short-Story Writers, 1910–1945. Hakutani quotes Howe as writing that “Big Black Good Man” shows “a strong feeling for the compactness of the story as a form. . . . When the language is scraggly or leaden there is a sharply articulated pattern or event.”

Considering the story collection in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 76, Afro-American Writers, 1940–1955, Edward D. Clark writes, “The works in Eight Men display the variety and development in Wright’s literary and thematic skills. Clark calls “Big Black Good Man” “one of Wright’s few humorous stories” and notes that it “develops the theme of black pride through the adventures of a black sailor.”

Clark concludes his overview of Wright’s work by declaring that Wright is “undeniably one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century,” noting that Wright’s writing has been translated and read around the world. According to Clark, “no black writer between Frederick Douglass and James Baldwin has offered so moving a testimony and delivered so scathing an indictment of America’s racial dilemmas to so large an audience as has Richard Wright.”