Black Boy: Chapter 13 Summary & Analysis

One day Richard finds in a Memphis newspaper an article railing against the writings of H. L. Mencken, a reporter who also edits the American Mercury, a magazine Richard occasionally reads. Richard feels that any writer believed to be dangerous by Southern whites must be a writer worth reading, and decides he will get his hands on Mencken’s books from the public library, which is for whites only. Richard asks an Irish Catholic man at the optical shop named Falk if he will allow Richard to forge a note from him, allowing Richard to check out Mencken books on Falk’s apparent behalf. Falk agrees, but says that Richard could get in trouble for doing this. Richard, however, is determined to read Mencken, by whatever means necessary.

Richard shows “Falk’s” note to the librarian at the Memphis library, and she agrees to lend the book to Richard “for Falk,” although she worries for a moment that Richard himself will read them (he tells her he is illiterate). Richard takes home Mencken’s Prejudices and A Book of Prefaces, and begins reading the latter. He is shocked by the range of Mencken’s intellect and the power of his writing; Richard also encounters, for the first time, the names of many famous writers, including Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche.

Richard begins staying up most nights reading. He checks out more books from the library, using Falk’s card, including novels by Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis. Richard does not read so much for the “plot” of the novels, but rather for the “point of view” they espouse—the novels are, to him, a window onto other ways of life. People including Olin and Mrs. Moss ask Richard why he is reading so much, but Richard hides his passion from them, saying only that he works his way through the books “to kill time.”

Richard’s brother, who has been living in Jackson with their mother, comes up to Memphis with her to join Richard, and the three move into a house together in the winter of 1926. Richard continues with his reading, and feels that “a gulf is widening” between himself and those around him, uneducated black people who do not desire to move North, or have no means to do so. Richard makes early attempts at writing and plans, with his mother and brother, to move north to Chicago. He realizes that he will not be able to be deferential to white authority like Shorty, nor will he survive forever in a “business” context with whites, whose power Richard resents too deeply.