Come si diventa negri? Di che colore sono i negri? Breve viaggio attraverso i romanzi di Richard Wright

This article wants to follow the path and development of “black subject” in the USA through the novels of the Afro-American writer Richard Wright. Written between the 50’s and 70’s, Wright's novels tell us about the segregation and humiliation inflicted by white men, but also the process of self-colonisation that the Afro-American – no longer slaves, but still not entirely free, neither de iure, nor de facto – subjected themselves to. By telling the stories of young boys struggling with their growing up - from their childhood to the first steps into a violent adulthood - Wright shows – in a way which is never inane and rhetorical, nor blindly optimistic – the need to overcome the old models and racist stereotypes, and builds his own work as a true Bildungsroman of the “black subject”.