Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth, published in 1945 by Harper, was a semiautobiographical version of Richard Wright’s life.

The 1963 novel entitled Lawd Today!, published by Walker, is in many ways Wright’s best work, although it was never as successful as Black Boy or Native Son.

A member of the “Wright School,” Ann Petry wrote about the trials of life on 116th Street in Harlem in The Street. In that 1946 novel, published by Houghton, Petry explores the relationship of environment to a black woman’s effort to live with self-respect in the ghetto.

The 1952 Random House novel, Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison has become a classic portrayal of black experience in America.

The most authoritative biography of Richard Wright to date is Michel J. Fabre’s The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright, Morrow, 1973.