One of the really rich autobiographies available to us is the one by Richard Wright, Black Boy (American Hunger) A Record of Childhood and Youth, originally published in 1945 by Harper and Row. The copy I have, reissued in 1989, starts this way:
One winter morning in the long-ago four-year-old days of my life, I found myself standing before a fireplace, warming my hands over a mound of glowing coals, listening to the wind whistle past the house outside.Who wouldn't want to read about a black boy who was standing in the warmth out of the cold wind. The hands again, a symbol of the way we touch other people and things. Warming his hands against the cold wind.
Yet the winds of change were blowing even in 1945. Truman had recently, or would soon, send segregation in the armed forces. Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, dealt a blow to the "separate but equal" rationale. The Montgomery Bus Boycott would come soon as would the voting rights act and other national legislation.
It's hard to look back at that world through the lens of the Obama victory. But we lived in a time then when a president could never be elected if he was black. I kid growing up in this world will never know that one. Wright's autobiography is one that should be read by anyone who cares about America.
What do you think? Do you have a favorite book or first sentence? Tell me. Post a comment. I'd like to know. And follow me on Twitter.com
Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com.
Ian Kearney, the director of the Kearney Music School, an elite musical training school in Philadelphia, dies after a fall from a balcony during a recital. World-famous cellist, Henry Harrier, recently forced from the faculty, returns to investigate Ian's death when his prized former student is arrested. Henry shows through his brilliant and single-minded pursuit of the truth that, as usual, they have it all wrong. This Sherlock Holmes-type mystery leads the reader through the world of classical music and lays bare the conflicts which dominate the lives of talented adolescents when placed under the pressure of studying for a demanding, stressful, and often elusive career as a classical music performer. Henry Harrier is part John Le Carre's George Smiley, part Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes, and part Orlando Cole the beloved teacher, renowned chamber musician, and until his own retirement, the premier cellist of the Curtis Institute.
Tim was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1946. In 1951 he moved with his family to Schenectady, New York, where he lived through high school. He attended Baldwin-Wallace College, Berea, Ohio, from 1964 to 1968. He graduated in 1968 with a B.A. in history and philosophy. He received his Ph. D. in history in U.S. history in 1980 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison after spending 2.5 years in the U. S. Army. Most of his army service was completed in Wuerzburg, Germany, from 1969-1971. In 1972 he returned to Madison to complete his doctoral study. His dissertation, Those Who Moved; Internal Migrants in American 1607-1840, combined the statistical analysis of genealogical and biographical data with the study of traditional literary diaries, letters, and journals.
