The image that emerges from Richard Wright's autobiographical short stories, Uncle Tom's Children, is that of a lonely and troubled childhood. Born September 4, 1908, near Natchez, Mississippi, Wright was the unwanted son of sharecroppers. His father deserted the family when Wright was five years old, after his mother suffered a stroke.

Wright's mother became totally paralyzed when he was ten, and his domineering grandmother attempted to force her religious fanaticism on the boy, who rebelled. At fifteen, he left home for Memphis, Tennessee, and at nineteen moved to Chicago, where he began to write seriously. There, in 1931, he published the story "Superstition" in Abbot's Monthly Magazine and became involved with the John Reed Club and the Communist party. Soon his poetry began to appear in leftist literary magazines such as the Anvil, Left Front, New Masses, and International Literature. While working for the Illinois Federal...