What could be a topic of one of the stories Richard wrote that are mentioned in Chapter IV of Black Boy?I'd like some sugestions about what could...

Regarding the stories Richard began to write at the end of Chapter IV in Black Boy by Richard Wright, these stories as he describes them were emotional stories filled with "atmosphere and longing and death." At this point in his life, Richard has not read extensively, so his subject mater must be restricted to what he knows or can imagine that is in keeping with boyhood. He also makes it clear that these stories gave him an escape from, a liberty from, the pain in his young life and a way to express himsefl that was free from the limitations to expression that had been forced upon him from family and society begining with the day he set the house on fire, which is a nice metaphor for the restrictions on the author's life setting Wright on fire for the right of expression, a fire that burned brightly in him illuminating the world.

Supposition is all that can be called upon in guessing what he might have written. I'm imagining a story about a black boy, Edward, who is not a schoolboy but who has been taught to read by another schoolboy and who meets a new black boy in the neighborhood.

This new boy is smaller and poorer. He has a father who is always away from home taking any and every scrap of work he can find and a mother who is always working over a hot washtub and a hot iron doing other people's washing while her son, left to his own idle, lonely devices, wanders in old, torn, dirty clothes. Edward watches silently as the neighborhood boys pick on the new boy, Jackson, and one day gang up on him because he is so small and so silent that they despise him and beat him.

While Jackson is trying to recover, Edward goes to him and reads to him, reading anything he can lay his hands on, like labels from old cans. He even manages to teach Jackson to read a little. One day, Jackson isn't to be found. His mother is wailing over her ironing board. Jackson has died in the night from a cerebral hemorrhage. Edward only has the labels that read together left to remember him by and in his grief vows he will always speak his mind and not stand idly by to witness cruelty.