Butterfield, Stephen. Black Autobiography in America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974. Essays on slave narratives and other influences upon black autobiography as well as essays on specific writers including Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Frederick Douglass.

Fabre, Michel. The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright. Translated by Isabel Barzun. Rev. ed. New York: William Morrow, 1973. A significant, and probably the definitive, biography, with much useful information about Wright’s literary works, including Black Boy.

Felgar, Robert. Richard Wright. Boston: Twayne, 1980. A useful overview of the author and his works.

Gibson, Donald B. “Richard Wright’s Black Boy and the Trauma of Autobiographical Rebirth,” in Callaloo. IX (Summer, 1986), pp. 492-498.

Howland, Jacob. “Black Boy: A Story of Soul-Making and a Quest for the Real,” in Phylon. XLVII (June, 1986), pp. 117-127.

Mack, Richard, and Frank E. Moorer. Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1984. A collection of essays examining the writer and his works, including a chronology of important dates in Wright’s life.

Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969. A general study, including a brief discussion of Black Boy as a film documentary.

Porter, Horace A. “The Horror and the Glory: Richard Wright’s Portrait of the Artist in Black Boy and American Hunger,” in Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays, 1984. Edited by Frank E. Moorer.

Stepto, Robert T. Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative. 2d ed. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1979.

Thaddeus, Janice. “The Metamorphosis of Richard Wright’s Black Boy,” in American Literature. LVII (May, 1985), pp. 199-214.

Wright, Richard. Conversations with Richard Wright. Edited by Keneth Kinnamon and Michel Fabre. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993.