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Uncle Tom’s Children: Four Novellas
Richard Wright(1938)
A collection of powerful and tragic novellas by
RICHARDWRIGHTthat marked the turn toward
stark realism and naturalism as the Harlem Renais-
sance came to a close. Published in 1938, two years
before his bestseller NATIVESON, Uncle Tom’s Chil-
drenincluded “Big Boy Leaves Home,” “Down by
the Riverside,” “Long Black Song,” and the prize-
winning piece entitled “Fire and Cloud.” Wright’s
literary success with Uncle Tom’s Childrenwas en-
riched by the fact that this also was the year in
which he met RALPHELLISON, the writer who be-
came one of his closest friends and intellectual al-
lies. A second edition, published later in 1938,
appeared under the title Uncle Tom’s Children: Five
Long Stories.The fifth piece added to the collection
was “BRIGHT ANDMORNINGSTAR,” a short story
that Wright published in NEWMASSESin 1938 and
saw included in Best American Short Stories.A third
edition of the collection appeared in 1940 with
HARPER ANDBROTHERS, the company that pub-
lished Native Son, and this edition included
Wright’s stark autobiographical narrative entitled
“The Ethics of Living Jim Crow.”
The stories illuminate the ways in which
African-American self-determination and domes-
tic stability are under perpetual threat. He ex-
plores the inhumane nature of violence, contests
notions of southern honor, and produces a thor-
oughly overwhelming set of stories about modern
communities in crisis. The stories are rooted in an
explosive American South that is prone to LYNCH-
ING and to acts of devastating white violence

against people of color. The first story, “Big Boy

Leaves Home,” for instance, is an earnest tale

about Big Boy, a daring young man whose reckless-

ness endangers him and his friends. After a fateful

decision to go skinny-dipping in Harvey’s Pond lo-

cated on white-owned land, the boys are unable to

recover their clothes easily when a white woman

arrives on the scene. The predictable conflict that

emerges escalates rapidly, and within minutes Big

Boy, in an effort to stem the hysteria that incites

white lynch mobs, becomes a murderer who is

forced to flee his home and family. “Down by the

Riverside” showcases the nature of awful, deadly

indecision that can make life for people of color in

the South an unrelenting source of moral and

emotional distress. “Long Black Song” represents a

narrative departure for Wright in that it features a

female protagonist. Yet again, however, Wright

hones in on the permeability and fragility of

African-American homes. Sarah, a young wife, is

tragically seduced by a traveling salesman who

calls when her husband is away. She is found out

when Silas, her cuckolded husband, discovers the

white man’s hat by the bedside. Enraged, he at-

tacks and kills two white men and then is set upon

by a lynch mob that descends upon the house. The

story is informed by Wright’s own life and the vi-

cious murder of his own uncle Silas Hopkins in

Elaine, Arkansas. Wright, his mother, and his sib-

lings had relocated to Elaine to live with Hopkins

and Wright’s maternal aunt. In 1916 a mob of

white men, determined to acquire the property of

Hopkins, murdered him, and their brutality forced

the family to flee for their own lives.