Cultural memory and deconstruction of the single story in Richard Wright’s Black Boy (American hunger)

Abstract

This essay aims to analyze how the narrative management operated in the composition of Black Boy (American Hunger), by Richard Wright, takes part of the process of constitution of a cultural memory (ASSMANN, 1995) on African American experience. In addition, we discuss this cultural memory constitution as a way of breaking with “the single story” (ADICHIE, 2009), which, in this case, means History made up in the white perspective excluding points of view that scape this ethnic group. To do so, we analyze some pieces from the text concentrating on the stories brought up to constitute the narrative fabric and how they reshape comprehensions about past and question the official History.

Keywords

• Cultural memory
• The single story
• Narrative
• Richard Wright