Black Boy Allusions & Cultural References

Literary and Philosophical References

• Bluebeard and His Seven Wives (1.2.23)
• The Bible: Colossians 3:14 (1.4.100), Exodus 20:10 (1.5.44), Philippians 4:7 (1.5.169)
• Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage (1.5.68)
• Flynn’s Detective Weekly (1.5.138)
• Argosy All-Story Magazine (1.5.138)
• Kafka, The Castle (1.5.186)
• The Virgin Mary (1.6.90)
• The Southern Register (1.7.84)
• Horatio Alger (1.7.123)
• George Randolph Chester, Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford (1.7.123)
• Harper’s Magazine (1.12.50)
• Atlantic Monthly (1.12.50)
• American Mercury (1.12.50)
• Commercial Appeal (1.12.57)
• H.L. Mencken (1.13.1), A Book of Prefaces (1.13.57), Prejudice (1.13.57)
• Anatole France (1.13.62)
• Joseph Conrad (1.13.62)
• Sinclair Lewis (1.13.62), Main Street (1.13.65), Babbitt (1.13.65)
• Sherwood Anderson (1.13.62)
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1.13.62), The Possessed (2.15.167)
• George Moore (1.13.62)
• Gustav Flaubert (1.13.62)
• Guy de Maupassant (1.13.62)
• Leo Tolstoy (1.13.62)
• Frank Harris (1.13.62)
• Mark Twain (1.13.62)
• Thomas Hardy (1.13.62)
• Arnold Bennet (1.13.62)
• Stephen Crane (1.13.62), The Red Badge of Courage (2.15.167)
• Émile Zola (1.13.62)
• Maxim Gorky (1.13.62, 2.18.26)
• Henri Bergson (1.13.62)
• Henrik Ibsen (1.13.62)
• Honoré de Balzac (1.13.62)
• Bernard Shaw (1.13.62)
• Alexandre Dumas (1.13.62)
• Edgar Allan Poe (1.13.62)
• Thomas Mann (1.13.62)
• O. Henry (1.13.62)
• Theodore Dreiser (1.13.62), Jennie Gerhardt, Sister Carrie (1.13.73)
• H.G. Wells (1.13.62)
• Stendhal (1.13.62)
• Nikolay Gogol (1.13.62)
• T.S. Eliot (1.13.62)
• André Gide (1.13.62, 2.18.26)
• Charles Baudelaire (1.13.62)
• Edgar Lee Masters (1.13.62)
• Ivan Turgenev (1.13.62)
• James Huneker (1.13.62)
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1.13.62)
• Gertrude Stein, Three Lives (2.15.167)
• Proust, A Remembrance of Things Past (2.15.191)
• Karl Marx (2.16.18)
• Chicago Daily Tribune (2.17.75)
• The Herald-Examiner (2.17.79)
• Anvil (2.18.2)
• Jack Conroy (2.18.2)
• Masses (2.18.24)
• International Literature (2.18.26)
• Left Front (2.18.28)
• The Daily Worker (2.18.83)
• Richard Wright, Big Boy Leaves Home (2.19.140), Down by the Riverside, Long Black Song (2.19.156)
• Paul Green, Hymn to the Rising Sun (2.19.408)
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (2.19.224)
• The Protestant Ethic (2.19.366)

Historical References

• World War I (1.2.252)
• Buffalo Soldiers (1.2.252)
• Tear/Mustard Gas (1.3.19)
• Red Summer of 1919 Race Riots (1.3.22)
• Ku Klux Klan (1.5.110 and various other places)
• The Great Migration (1.5.119)
• The Civil War (1.5.178 and various other places)
• Abraham Lincoln (1.5.178 and various other places)
• The Union Army (1.5.180)
• United States Department of War (1.5.181)
• Jim Crow (1.7.124)
• U.S. Grant (1.12.114)
• General Sherman (1.12.114)
• Slavery (1.12.114)
• Communism (1.12.114)
• Socialism (1.12.114)
• The Constitution (1.12.114)
• The Republican Party (1.12.114)
• The Black Belt (2.15.8)
• No Man’s Land (2.15.35)
• Garveyites (2.16.6)
• Marcus Garvey (2.16.7)
• The Great Depression (2.16.10)
• Lenin (2.16.129 and other places)
• Josef Stalin (2.16.129), The National and Colonial Question (2.19.81)
• Herbert Hoover (2.16.183)
• The Bonus Army (2.16.183)
• William Hale Thompson (2.16.209)
• Welfare (2.16.223)
• Ascheim-Zondek Tests (2.17.20)
• Wassermann Tests (2.17.20)
• John Reed Club (2.18.2)
• Samuel Lewis Shane (2.18.27)
• Whittaker Chambers (2.18.27)
• WWII (2.18.27)
• USSR (2.18.29)
• Leon Trotsky (2.18.89)
• The Communist Party (2.18.91)
• The Kremlin (2.19.259)
• Joe Louis (2.19.266)
• Fascism (2.19.302)
• Charles DeSheim (2.19.408)
• Russian Revolution (2.19.365)
• The Moscow Trials (2.19.382)
• The Internationale (2.20.88)

Pop Culture References

• S.S. Kate Adams (1.1.65)
• This may be the last time (I don't know) (1.6.82)
• It’s Me, O Lord, Standing In The Need Of Prayer (1.6.84)
• Jack Johnson (1.12.114)