Richard Wright died 50 years ago and in that time there has been little research on the role of women in his powerful novels of African-American life in America. This research monograph fulfills that informational and interpretative need. It is an analysis of Wright’s seemingly thin and shadowy use of female characters and a reinterpretation of those characters as symbolical instruments in the development of Wright’s chief male characters as they struggle as boy-men in the profoundly racist America of the early and mid 20th century America.