I first came upon Richard Wright via The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (incredible book btw), the title of which actually comes from a poem in the original draft of Black Boy:

I was leaving the South
to fling myself into the unknown...
I was taking a part of the South
to transplant in alien soil,
to see if it could grow differently,
if it could drink of new and cool rains,
bend in strange winds,
respond to the warmth of other suns
and, perhaps, to bloom.

I first read Wright's novel Native Son, a story about a young black man (Bigger Thomas) born to Jim Crow Mississippi and living in Chicago's redlined Black Belt in the 1930s ::: spoiler spoiler
who stumbles into committing horrific crimes, driven there by both his own aggressive temperament and by invisible social forces that bred in him deep resentment, suspicion, and fear of white people (even those ostensibly trying to help him and treat him as equal). Wright speaks to these social forces through Bigger's communist lawyer Max.
:::

The book was especially captivating to me through Wright's ability to express the chaotic, bewildered psychological turmoil in Bigger's mind throughout the book.

Reading Black Boy, Wright's autobiography, it is clear where this ability came from. As powerful as Native Son is, I found Black Boy to be even more so. The details of his life are harrowing. The abject poverty and hunger, the racial subjugation and humiliation, the suppression of his individuality and intellect by his own family and community. But again what made this book so captivating to me was clarity with which he could see and portray his own inner life and psychology through all of this. His prose is engrossing and poetic. I was absorbed in it from page one. I've never quite read anything else like it, and can't recommend it enough.

If anyone has read Black Boy or anything else by Wright (or Isabel Wilkerson as well for that matter; Caste and The Warmth of Other Suns are absolute favorites of mine), I'd love to hear your thoughts.