Wright insisted that young communist writers be given space to cultivate their talents. He later described this episode through his fictional character Buddy Nealson, an African-American communist, in his essay "I tried to be a Communist", published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1944. This text was an excerpt of his autobiography scheduled to be published as American Hunger but was removed from the actual publication of Black Boy upon request by the Book of the Month Club.. It remained an essay until the publication of American Hunger in 1977 and the complete Black Boy (American Hunger) in 1991. James Zeigler: Red Scare Racism and Cold War Black Radicalism. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015, pp. 72–73. Indeed, his relations with the party turned violent; Wright was threatened at knifepoint by fellow-traveler co-workers, denounced as a Trotskyite in the street by strikers, and physically assaulted by former comrades when he tried to join them during the 1936 Labour Day march.
Wright insisted that young communist writers be given space to cultivate their talents. He later described this episode through his fictional character Buddy Nealson, an African-American communist, in his essay "I tried to be a Communist", published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1944. This text was an exc,erpt of his autobiography scheduled to be published as American Hunger but was removed from the actual publication of Black Boy upon request by the Book of the Month Club.. It remained an essay until the publication of American Hunger in 1977 and the complete Black Boy (American Hunger) in 1991. James Zeigler: Red Scare Racism and Cold War Black Radicalism. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015, pp. 72–73. Indeed, his relations with the party turned violent; Wright was threatened at knifepoint by fellow-traveler co-workers denounced as a Trotskyite in the street by strikers, and physically assaulted by former comrades when he tried to join them during the 1936 Labour Day march.