The autobiographies of George Lamming. Richard Wright and Camara Laye have much in common with many other autobiographies which have emerged out of the European tradition. They share with other writers of the autobiography a common intention, which is to make themselves “the subject of [their] book and to impart some sense of it to the reader” (Olney 23). In an article entitled “The Negro Writer and his World,” George Lamming himself wrote that “the modern black writer's endeavor is like that of every other writer whose work is a form of self-inquiry” (Caribbean Quarterly 109). Yet, because of a common racial experience and the subsequent similarities in their cultural conditions, the autobiographies of these three black writers from three different parts of the African world present much that is common to them and unique both in content and method, even as they evidence variations among themselves.

One shared feature in the autobiographies of all three writers is the centrality of the mother's role in the lives of the youths as they emerge from childhood to adulthood. The matriarchal disposition present in many black families of Africa, the Caribbean and African American communities, coupled with specific historical circumstances, induce Laye, Lamming and Wright to underscore the crucial role that the mother plays in shaping the identity of her son in The Dark Child, In the Castle of My Skin, and Black Boy respectively. The sons in these autobiographies define themselves in relationship to their mothers.

Each autobiography presents a different family situation; yet for all the differences, the image of the strong African woman as mother haunts the pages of all three texts. From Africa to the United States to the Caribbean, she plays a pivotal role in the upbringing and development of her child. She protects as much as she scolds, seeking to provide some sense of direction to her offspring. She is the source of their perception of reality throughout their childhood up to their adolescence.

Each writer is emphatic in acknowledging, from beginning to end, the efforts his mother exerts in her attempt to influence who and what her son becomes. Each mother seeks to mold the personality of the young black male to prepare him to live in a society that may be unfamiliar and/or hostile to the youth. The matriarchal imperative is very decisive in the lives of the youngsters.

Historically, the black mother has been acknowledged as the major determinant in the survival of the black family, particularly in the diaspora where she has often had to assume the status of the head of the household as a result of the absence or ineffectual presence of the male. She has performed this task effectively in spite of her many sufferings. Treated as animals just like their male counterparts in slavery, the women had additional indignities heaped upon them. They were raped at will and made to undergo all manner of sexual depravities to satisfy the lusts of the slaveholders. They were reduced to the level of mere “breeder” of slaves when supplies from Africa could not keep up with the demands of the plantation.

To ensure that they perform this role, masters developed the most cruel of punishments. C. L. R. James in his Black Jacobins tells us that “the torture of the collar was specially reserved for women who were suspected of abortion, and the collar never left their necks until they had produced a child (13). Also, according to James, the pregnant woman was not spared the torture of the “four-post”: “A hole was dug in the earth to accommodate the unborn child.” (13)

This same black mother had to look on helplessly while her children were sold off once they reached an age deemed suitable for work by the plantation overseer. Francis Watkins Harper, one of the best known antislavery poets of the nineteenth century, captures the predicament of the black mother in her poem “The Slave Mother.” With “a burdened heart / … breaking in despair,” with “hands … sadly clasped / … bowed and feeble head / … a fragile form” that speaks of “grief and dread,” this black mother, “pale with fear,” attempts to hide her “trembling” son from the “cruel hands” of the slave master. Her role as protector is accentuated here, though in this case she seems impotent.

She is made to suffer the worst type of alienation known to womankind—the forced separation of mother from child. She is devastated by the knowledge that “he is not hers, although she bore / for him a mother's pains.” She must give birth only to see the sole “wreath of household love / that binds her breaking heart” snatched from her to be sold as a commodity. (Black Writers of America 225). Forced to witness the brutal enslavement of their offspring, some mothers either aborted or poisoned their children both as an act of defiance and as an act of mercy.

Moreover, since slaveholders had very little regard for the slaves' family life, “wives and husbands, children and parents, were separated at the will of the master” (James 15). Whatever shred of family life remained was primarily as a result of the efforts of the mother. With the virtual disappearance of the father in his traditional role of provider and protector, the mother had to appropriate this role even as she exercised the greatest moral authority over her children. The ties with her children, especially with her sons, took on special significance.

Even after slavery was abolished, the role of the black mother in many areas of the diaspora did not change significantly; she often found herself having to be primarily responsible for the nourishment and development of her children. She saw herself as the only shield between her sons and a hostile external world. She felt responsible for the development of her sons' character and ultimately their identity. According to the 1969 publication of Black Rage, authored by two black psychiatrists, she performs the function of “culture bearer … interprets the society to the children and takes as her task the shaping of the character to meet the world as she knows it” (Grier and Cobbs 51). The paradigm of the black mother in this psychological text holds true in the literary depictions of Wright, Laye and Lamming.

As culture bearer, interpreter and molder of character, the mother additionally takes on the role “as a concerned mediator between society and the child,” because she is painfully aware that it is up to her to “produce and shape a unique type of man” (52). The survival of her child is at stake and that realization impels her to exercise control at every point. This has been the case for thousands of black mothers as it certainly is the case for the overly protective mothers of Wright, Lamming and Laye. The role of these mothers and their relationship to their sons facilitate the search for and construction of an identity on a human level.

The search for self-definition begins at a very early age in all three texts and in each instance, the mother is at the core of that process. For each writer, it begins with the very moment of conscious recollection. When the novel begins, the author/narrator of The Dark Child is five or six years old, while the author/narrator of Black Boy is four. The oldest of them—Lamming—begins his journey towards individual consciousness at the age of nine. This is the age of innocence, and this notion is immediately established in all three novels. Each begins with a little boy in the process of performing some act, the significance of which is not fully appreciated by the immature child until the mother intervenes.

When The Dark Child begins, the author/narrator is playing with a poisonous snake at the entrance to his father's hut. His innocence has banished all fear and it is only in hindsight that he can appreciate the danger: “I was laughing. I had not the slightest fear, and I feel sure that the snake would not have hesitated before burying his fangs in my fingers …” (Laye 18). Laye's mother in her protective role “gave [him] a few sharp slaps” and “solemnly warned [him] never to play that game again” (18). Like the other two mothers of Black Boy and In the Castle …, she makes her appearance early as a disciplinarian determined to guide her child along the ‘correct’ path.

As an important repository of knowledge in the community, she is the one to first explain to him the significance of the “little black snake with a strikingly marked body”: “My son, this one must not be killed: he is not like other snakes, and he will not harm you: you must never interfere with him” (22). She advises him that the snake is his “father's guiding spirit” (22). Soon after this incident, the author informs us that his mother sensed very deeply anything which concerned him. This acknowledgment foreshadows the crucial role that she is to play in the growth and development of her son's personality.

Similarly, danger born of innocence confronts the author/narrator at the beginning of Black Boy. The child sets fire to his mother's curtains and the entire house is in jeopardy of being consumed by the fire. Even though the child admits to being afraid, it is not the fear of what damage he had done and might still do, but the fear that his mother would beat him which leads him to commit yet another foolish act—he hides under the burning house:

I crawled under the house and crept into a dark hollow of a brick chimney and balled myself into a tight spot. My mother must not find me and whip me for what I had done. And neither did it occur to me that I was under a burning house.”

(11)

Wright's mother is at the very center of his initial stirring of consciousness. He remembers clearly that “all morning my mother had been scolding me, telling me to keep still, warning me that I must make no noise” (9). He establishes his mother's early role in molding him. As a disciplinarian, she has already begun to prepare her “black boy for his subordinate place in the world.” (Grier and Cobbs 50)

The awakening of the consciousness is equally dramatic at the beginning of Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin. In this instance, however, whatever danger is summoned up to jolt the consciousness is not the active doing of the author/narrator. It is an act of nature or as his mother would say. “The will of the Lord” (1). The worst flood that the village has known drowns out his ninth birthday, and all he can do is weep “for the watery waste of my ninth important day” (1). Linking his ninth birthday with the flood wreckage of the village, the narrator seeks to project the growth and development of a consciousness which would be shaped to some degree by negative forces: but at the center of this growth and development is the influence of the mother, determined to impose her perception and interpretation of the flood upon her son.

The only child of his mother and with no recollection of his father “who had only fathered the idea of [him], he was left the sole liability of [his] mother who really fathered [him] (3). Like her counterpart in Black Boy, she must “assume many masculine functions” (Grier and Cobbs 51). A strict disciplinarian, “G's” mother attempts to exercise control over him throughout his progress from boyhood to adolescence. Whenever he breaks her rules, he is either physically punished or verbally castigated.

When “G” complains that his birthday has been a disappointment because of the heavy rains, he is corrected by his mother. He must see the rains as “showers of blessing” because “it was irreverent to disapprove the will of the Lord” (1). She has no qualms about bathing him naked in the yard and whenever he disobeys her commands, he can expect to receive the belt with as much frequency and strength as his mother can muster: “She talked as she flogged so that I could see, presumably, why I deserved to be flogged” (105). To him, she is “fierce, aggressive and strict.” He is being adequately prepared for the future.

Even as she prepares her son for what lies ahead, she accepts responsibility for his social and educational performances. She believes she can control his social performance through threats and beatings; but her lack of formal education prohibits her from influencing his educational performance to the same degree. Consequently, his high school reports cause her anxiety and agony:

She didn't understand why the masters should say what they had to say. She didn't think I was as bad as all that, and she didn't believe the masters would tell lies. Sometimes she wept to think that everything had been wasted. Sometimes she visited the headmaster or asked to see the master whose condemnation had been the least sympathetic. She became very nervous, and everything, it seemed, was on my account … It was as though she had seen a new sorrow.

(294)

This “new sorrow” probably comes from the realization that in this area she can do no more than to remind him that “the mind was the man … and if you had a mind you would be what you wanted to be and not what the world would have you” to be. (220). To ensure that her son's mind cultivate the kind of man she wanted him to be, she sacrificed so he could receive the “best” education possible.

Even when “G” is nineteen years old and is about to leave for Trinidad, his mother refuses to relinquish control over him. Despite admitting that he was a man, she is domineering to the very end:

“You're a man now, but you better remember what the old people always say … you can play man when you cross the sea tomorrow but not now. You're my child now, an' I don't care how old you be, once I'm alive you got to have the right and proper respect for me. If you grow to one hundred you're my child … and when you see the others playing man, an' doing as they please, just tell them you sorry, 'tis different with you, 'cause your mother ain't that sort o'woman. Let them know I don't play, an' that a child is a child for me. Nothing more an' nothing less.”

(256)

Sensing that he might be ignoring her rebuke, she ignores his age and is as determined now, as she had been when he was nine, to give him a beating: “It is a long time I ain't hit you, but I'll let you have it good and proper this evening if you give me cause to” (258). She is prepared to carry through with her threat: “I'll show you ain't too big for me to take your pants down, and roast you tail alive” (259).

“G's” mother's major concern is that life in Trinidad should not undo in her son's character what she has sought to establish. Believing that Trinidad possesses the ability to corrupt her son, she lectures to him about the company he must keep and the standards of behavior he must maintain. She is prepared, if necessary, to travel to Trinidad, to enforce her admonitions: “Well, I tell you something, the day I hear you jumpin' up in any street like a bloody hooligan, the day I hear.—Well, I tell you boy, I'll come for you if I got to walk the sea to an' from. With the help o' the Lord I'll come for you” (263). Just as she had waged a battle against the possible corrupting influence of her son's peers, she is equally determined to combat the wider social forces likely to confront her son in a strange land.

However, behind the austere image which she projects, one senses genuine caring and the devoted love of a mother for her son, subtly expressed in the special final dinner which she diligently prepares for him before his departure and in the admonitions about how he must behave in Trinidad. The hope and intention of the narrator's mother is that she will continue to influence his character and personality long after he has departed from her presence.

Since she will not be there to mediate between him and society, she must seize this final opportunity to influence his personality and consequently, his behavior. Her fear is that, without her control and intervention, he is likely to go astray:

If you're left all on your own not the devil in hell self can keep up with you, ‘cause all you want is a little encouragement, an' it don't matter what they encourage you to do … That's why I take this last chance the good God give me to try an' call you to your senses, ‘cause 'tis never too late to save a soul.’

(272)

Contrary to her fears, her preparation has made it possible for him to escape the perceived temptations in the “strange land” of Trinidad. In acknowledgment of his mother's influence, the author has fittingly dedicated this chronicle of his boyhood, wherein his identity has been shaped, to his mother.

In his work, Lamming engages in a search for the real self that has been obscured by the constructs of society. While the peer group [Trumper, Boy Blue and Bob], the village environment and the educational institutions have undoubtedly played a part in the realization of “G's” selfhood, it is his mother who had the most profound effect on the self that is “hidden somewhere in the castle of [his] skin.” (253)

In spite of differences, the family setting, which is partially responsible for defining Lamming, bears a striking resemblance to its counterpart in Black Boy. Although Wright begins his life story with a father present, he may as well not have one, for in a real sense, he is as fatherless as “G” is in In the Castle of My Skin. It is his mother who heads the household. She is the disciplinarian whose punishment the child fears. The father does not exercise much of an influence over his son to whom “he was always a stranger. … always somehow alien and remote” (17). When the father eventually deserts the family, leaving them prey to hunger, the burden of nurturing and providing falls almost exclusively on the shoulders of the mother who must project the image of the strong African mother whose duty it is also to “father” the child, as was the case in In the Castle of My Skin.

Richard's mother is as protective and as stern as “G's” mother. The boy fears her anger as “G” fears his mother's anger. She comes on stage as aggressively as her counterpart does in In the Castle of My Skin. Her first interaction with Richard is to “shut him up” with a threat: “She came to me and shook her finger in my face. ‘You stop that yelling, you hear?’ “(9). The reluctance to offend his mother for fear of her likely response is the same as that which exists in In the Castle of My Skin between “G” and his mother.

Richard's fear of his mother is well founded. When his mother catches up with him after the fire, she comes “close to killing (him)”: “I was lashed so hard and long that I lost consciousness. I was beaten out of my senses and later I found myself in bed, screaming, determined to run away, tussling with my mother and father who were trying to keep me still. I was lost in a fog of fear. A doctor was called in” (13). This is the mother who, in her attempt to shape her child for playing his proper role in the racist South, admonishes and punishes to ensure compliance.

When Richard deliberately kills the family's kitten as an act of “triumph over (his) father,” she is there to “whack (him) across (his) mouth,” and to require that he repeat a prayer after her: “Dear God, our Father, forgive me, for I knew not what I was doing. And spare my poor life, even though I did not spare the life of the kitten … And while I sleep tonight, do not snatch the breath of life from me” (20). This prayer is preceded by his mother's command to him to bury the kitten he has just killed. The effect of this is a contriteness of heart on the part of Richard.

Richard's mother continues her attempts to influence her son's thought and behavior throughout his childhood in what seems to him to be cruel and punitive fashion, particularly where racial matters are concerned. When he questions her about segregation, he is told to keep quiet. When his childlike mind inquires about the racial identification of his grandmother, he is slapped. When he questions why the family had not fought back when Uncle Hoskins was murdered by whites, he is slapped into silence once again. To Richard, the most puzzling of these is the incident in which he receives a deep cut to head from a gang of white boys. Instead of receiving what he thought would have been deserving sympathy, he is beaten by his mother who tells him that he must never fight white boys again, …” (94). She seldom explains; for the most part, she only commands.

Richard, the child, may not understand his mother's behavior, but in her own way, she is attempting to mold a child who will be able to survive a hostile Southern society which stands ready to mete out strict and merciless judgment whenever its racist sensibilities are offended. Richard's mother resembles in almost every detail the black mother of whom Grier and Cobbs speak: “… the black mother has a more ominous message for her child and feels more urgently the need to get the message across. The child must know that the white world is dangerous and that if he does not understand its rules it may kill him” (51). Richard's mother says as much after beating him for fighting with white boys: “but when she took me home she beat me, telling me that I must never fight white boys again, that I might be killed by them (94; italics mine).

The mother seeks to communicate to her son the hostility of a white society and, at the same time, to “suppress [his] masculine assertiveness and aggression lest these put the boy's life in jeopardy” (Grier and Cobbs 52). Her actions are deliberate and purposeful because they are designed to ensure the survival of her child in a hostile society.

In this setting, these two psychiatrists note that the black mother is likely to undergo “frequent and rapid shifts of mood … The mother who sang spirituals gently at church was capable of inflicting senseless pain at home.” This is a fair characterization of Richard's mother; and what may seem as inconsistencies or contradictions are necessary components for “preparing the boy for adulthood … so that he could understand his later role in a white society” (52). Of the three mothers in the autobiographies, Richard's mother best understands the dangers of her society, for she is a living victim of that society. She knows what that society requires of her son and she attempt to mold a personality accordingly.

When it is time to teach him to stand up to his peers on the streets of Memphis, she is equally adroit. Seeking to fill the void left by his father's desertion, his mother assumes control, and in a matter of minutes, gives her son a valuable lesson in growing up. “I'm going to teach you this night to stand up and fight for yourself” (24). Henceforth, Richard gains the respect of his peers and is able to walk the streets unmolested.

As long as she is physically able to, she attempts to impose her will on her child: “… my mother's ardently religious disposition dominated the household and I was often taken to Sunday school …” (33). Only her later paralysis and subsequent pain and helplessness prevent her from exercising greater influence.

Richard's mother knows that if her son is to survive, she must see to it that he acquires all the skills necessary to do so, and while she may have misgivings about how far her son can go with an education in the South, she is nevertheless anxious that he should learn to read: “When I had learned to recognize certain words, I told my mother that I wanted to learn to read and she encouraged me” (29). Subsequently, she does more than merely encourage him. According to Richard, “… she taught me to read, told me stories. On Sundays I would read the newspaper with my mother guiding me and spelling out the words” (30).

The significance of his mother's encouragement lies in the fact that the skill which she helps him to acquire eventually leads him to inquire into the nature of the social relations of his society, to question the status quo of those relations, and to become aware of alternative modes of social organization. The ability to read leads to a new consciousness, to a new man. This ability empowers Richard much in the same way as it had empowered Frederick Douglass. Each man moves on to become an author, employing the autobiographical text as the agent through which he liberates himself.

The seemingly dual personality found in “G's” mother in In the Castle of My Skin, is also present in Richard's mother. Under the veneer of a stern and uncompromising matriarch, lies a caring and loving person who is devastated by the act of having to place her children in an orphanage: “My mother hated to be separated from us, but she had no choice” (36). When she is unable to take the pleading young Richard out of the orphanage on one of her visits, her reaction is heartrending: “I begged my mother to take me away; she wept and told me to wait, that soon she would take us to Arkansas” (37). Later he would recall: “I had always felt a certain warmth with my mother, even when we had lived in squalor, …” (100). It is not difficult to understand the bond between mother and son, in spite of all the negative forces surrounding them.

Nowhere is the bond between the two better exemplified than in the touching scene where Richard is leaving to go North:

My mother sat in her rocking chair, humming to herself. Packed my suitcase and went to her. “Mama, I'm going away,” I whispered.

“Oh, no,” she protested.

“I've got to go, mama, I can't live this way.” “I'll send for you, mama, I'll be all right.”

“Take care of yourself. And send for me quickly. I'm not happy here,” she said.

(226)

Sensing that he might have brought pain to his mother's life in the past and feeling genuinely contrite, he is sufficiently touched to apologize, perhaps for the first time in his life: “I'm sorry for all these long years, mama. But I could not have helped it” (226). What comes next is as moving as the mother son separations in both In the Castle of My Skin and African Child:

I kissed her and she cried. “Be quiet, mama. I'm all right.”

(226)

Richard's mother is as persistent as “G's” mother, but is unable to endure in the same way. The system, which on the surface is more morally cruel, hostile and unrelenting than that in Creighton Villages, defeated her. At the end, the child whose consciousness has been shaped by the mother, must rescue that same mother. After he arrives in Chicago, he sends for his mother so that she can be better looked after. Despite her helplessness at this stage of her life. Richard's mother is still a very decisive factor in the development of his personality. Her suffering becomes for him a symbol of dreadful forces which condition his life and the lives of other black people. Indeed, the influence goes very deep:

… Her life set the emotional tone of my life, colored the men and the women I was to meet in the future, conditioned my relation to events that had not yet happened, determined my attitude to situations and circumstances I had yet to face. A somberness of spirit that I was never to lose, settled over me during the slow years of my mother's unrelieved suffering, a somberness that was to make me stand apart and look upon excessive joy with suspicion, that was to make me self-conscious, that was to make me keep forever on the move, as though to escape a nameless fate seeking to overtake me.

(112)

Indeed, Wright unequivocally makes his mother responsible for the personality that he has developed, for the peculiar manner in which he wrenches his identity from that hostile environment of the South and, more specifically, the alienation that he suffers as he grows up. So profound an effect does his mother's suffering have on his consciousness that by the time he is twelve years old, he ponders the weighty issues that would most likely be problematic to adults, if one is to believe him.

The family situation in The Dark Child is different in many ways from that in the other two autobiographies, though there are striking similarities in the nurturing role of the mother. While the child in the other autobiographies falls under the direction primarily of the mother, in The Dark Child, both mother and father are present throughout and take an active part in directing their child's personality. Thus, there is a strong father presence but the mother is more influential in molding the young Laye. In many ways she bears a striking resemblance to the mothers in In the Castle of My Skin and Black Boy. Very much the disciplinarian like the other two, she is not averse to exercising her prerogative to punish, even if it is only a “few sharp slaps” (18).

Laye's mother sets the rules around the compound and no one dares challenge them; she “saw to it that everything was done according to her own rules; and those rules were strict” (68). Like her counterpart in the other two novels, she mixes caring and gentleness with heavy-handedness: “My mother was very kind, very correct. She also had great authority, and kept an eye on everything we did; so that her kindness was not altogether untempered by severity” (66). When it is time for the child to be rebuked or corrected for his transgression, it is the mother who obliges.

Moreover, Laye's description of his mother parallels that of “G's” mother in In the Castle of My Skin. Her attitude is described as “authoritarian” and the respect given her by both her husband, friends and neighbor owes as much to the role of women in Guinea at that time, as it does to her character:

The woman's role in our country is one fundamental independence, of great inner pride. We despise only those who allow themselves to be despised. … My father would never have dreamed of despising anyone, least of all my mother. He had the greatest respect for her too, and so did our friends and neighbors. That was due, I am sure, to my mother's character, which was impressive; it was due also to the strange powers she possessed.

(69)

The strange powers continue to baffle the author even up to the writing of his text. He is witness to his mother's special powers which he cannot explain: “no one ever doubted it” (73). Through these powers, she is able to gain insight into upcoming activities in the village, to cast spells and to neutralize dangerous crocodiles. According to her son, the feats are more like “miracles”; they are “unbelievable,” but true because he has seen them “with [his] own eyes.” (71)

Eventually, in spite of all of her powers, she must settle for a diminished influence over her son's life. The outside world beckons, and she must let go, albeit reluctantly. Like “G's” mother, she is very concerned about her son's welfare in the new place to which he is going. She fears that he will not be treated as well as she has treated him. In her eyes, his leaving is like “going to live among savages” (138). Under the circumstances, she performs the same ritual as “G's” mother had performed. She helps her son pack and gives him a send-off with feast.

This is another case of a mother wishing to maintain a role as mediator between her child and the society, and wishing to ensure her son's survival. She realizes that it is impossible for her to continue to play this role in her son's life. He is not merely leaving the society that she knows well, but he is going to live in a foreign society of which she has no knowledge. This fact increases her concern for her child and multiplies her fears for his safety and comfort: “And tell me this, who's going to look after you? Who's going to mend your clothes? Who'll cook for you?” (185). She is devastated by the thought of her son's vulnerability in the new society: “The child will fall sick; that's what will happen and then what will I do? What will become of me?” (185). She views his downfall as hers as well.

While the mothers in the other two autobiographies make allowances for their children's education, Laye's mother makes no such allowance. She views Western education as merely a device to get her son away from her. For her, traditional education is sufficient. She is convinced that her son's traditional upbringing will supply him with all that is necessary for him to live in his society. Moreover, she is much more reluctant than the other two mothers to cut the bond between mother and son. She is much more possessive. She also betrays more emotion than the other two. She weeps very openly; and even as she weeps, the reader feels that she is weeping for much more than the departure of her son for a strange land.

It is the prospect that her influence may not prevail ultimately which has Laye's mother distraught at the mere mention of his leaving for France. Unlike the other two mothers, she has not been able to prepare her child for the new society he is about to enter. She herself knows nothing about it. She has instinctive misgivings. She can only have suspicions of the dangers that may await him, whereas the other two seem to be more knowledgeable about the potential obstacles to be surmounted by their sons.

Whatever their level of familiarity with the outside world to which their sons will soon depart, these mothers play a diminishing role in influencing their children. This is to be expected since each of the boys is in the process of moving into adulthood, that stage where independence of thought and action become crucial; but until that stage arrives, each author has emphasized his mother's role in shaping her son's life from the very moment we encounter the child to the point where each writer decides to bring a closure to his autobiography. Thus, each writer has confronted what may yet prove to be a characteristic features of all black autobiographies a feature which is by no means circumscribed by time or place.

Works Cited

Barksdale, Richard & Kenneth Kinnamon, eds. Black Writers of America. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972.

Grier, William H. and Price M. Cobbs. Black Rage. New York: Bantam, 1968.

Lamming, George. In The Castle of My Skin. New York: Schocken, 1983.

Lamming, George. “The Negro Writer and His World,” Caribbean Quarterly, February 1958. 109–115.

Laye, Camara. The African Child. Trans. James Kirkup and Ernest Jones. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1954.

Olney, James. Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972.

Wright, Richard. Black Boy New York: Harper & Row, 1945.