BLACK AND WHITE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23381, 24 June 1939, Page 4 (Supplement)

BLACK AND WHITE

FOUR VIVID STORIES "Uncle Tom's Children" has not, as the somewhat reminiscent title might suggest, the slightest atom of sentimentality. Here, so Paul Robeson tells us in tiic loreword, is "a true and clear picture of the coloured man in America." If that is so, tho world has still an amazingly long way to go before civilisation can be termed enlightened. Richard Wright, with his incisive, trenchant, picturesque style, "makes these stories unbearably vivid. There are four short stories, or "novellas." "Big Roy Leaves Home" i« a simple episode of four boys bathing by tho river, and unwittingly frightening a white woman. A whole countryside is roused in the hunt to kill. An awful sense of sickening fear communicates itself to the reader. Tho stark tragedy of "Long Black Son" makes one think that the chasm between black and white can never lie cYossed. The last story, "Fire and Cloud," is a .superb sketch of a magnificently courageous character, the visionary negro preacher, "Un.-lc Tom's Children," by Richard Wright. (Gollancz.) i