Wright's stories of helpless or long-suffering Blacks victimized by societal and individual White brutality mark the beginning of a new era in Black fiction and even his least important pieces contain unforgettable scenes and characters that burn their way into the reader's consciousness; characteristic is the savage sequence of events of "Big Boy Leaves Home," climaxed by a lynching which leaves the protagonist completely lost, alienated from life, a victim of meaningless and unjustified racial hatred and bigotry. But for all his talent, Wright's people—misunderstood, exploited, vilely misused by Whites—tend to be almost as one-dimensional as many of the stereotypes of the proletarian short fiction of the thirties. As a sad and moving testimonial to the evil of racism and its effect upon a gifted and bitterly disillusioned human being, Uncle Tom's Children and Eight Men constitute a disturbing and towering and permanent landmark in the literary history of Black-White relations, and their influence upon the younger generation of Black writers was and continues to be profound. (pp. 233-34)
William Peden, "The Black Explosion," in Studies in Short Fiction (copyright 1975 by Newberry College), Vol. XII, No. 3, Summer, 1975, pp. 231-41.∗
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