The innocent criminal in Black Boy, Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son and The Outsider "It's probably a simple accident that I never killed," commented Richard Wright casually in an interview with Robert Moss (596). After reading several of Wright's works, one can easily understand what Wright means by this statement. In his books Black Boy, Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, and The Outsider, Wright suggests that white society has turned blacks into criminals. The source of this statement comes from Wright's personal experiences as a Negro in the Deep South. Whether driven to crime by necessity or for personal fulfillment and self-realization, the protagonists of Wright's works are innocent criminals; they know that the supreme crime for which they are punished is that of being black. The circumstances created by a racist social order place characters in intolerable positions that force them into evil activities. In his autobiographical novel, Black Boy, Wright supports this theory using himself as an example. In the tradition of slave autobiography, Black Boy provides details of Wright's life from early childhood until his arrival in Chicago. As Joyce Ann Joyce says, Black Boy:...is a realistic and poetic account of the hunger Wright endured as a child, of his closeness to his mother, of the effects of his mother's illness, of his problems with his father, of abandonment by his father, the violence he suffered at the hands of his mother's relatives, his love for words and books, his discovery of racism and the development of racial consciousness, his struggle against his mother's religion and his grandmother, his poor education, ... and the development of his individuality.. .... middle of paper ......chard Wright. New York: Harcourt, 1969. Rpt. in Richard Wright's Native Son: Modern Critical Interpretations. New York: Chelsea House, 1988. Moss, Robert F. “Caged Misery.” Saturday review. January 21, 1978, 45-7. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. vol. 14. Detroit: Gale, 1980. Skerrett, Joseph T., Jr. “Dialing Bigger: Wright and the Making of Native Son.” in Native Son: Modern Critical Interpretations by Richard Wright. New York: Chelsea House, 1988. Wright, Richard. Black boy. New York: Harper, 1944._____. "How much bigger he was born." Saturday review. 1 June 1940, page n. Rpt. in Native Son. New York: Harper, 1940._____. Native son. New York: Harper, 1940._____. The Stranger. New York: Harper, 1953._____. Uncle Tom's Children. New York: Harper, 1936.