Cinquemila chilometri al secondo by Manuele Fior

For example, they had to “mow” the orphanage’s grounds: a herd of children on their hands and knees, pulling the grass out in clumps, often too lightheaded to make any headway.

He and the other children were fed only twice a day-before bed they received a thin slice of bread with a smear of molasses-but that didn’t save them from having to work. (He was turned down for a good job with the post office because he didn’t weight enough.) In one indelible scene, Wright, who has been deposited in an orphanage because his mother temporarily can’t take care of him, is dizzy with hunger. Most of all, though, the title is literal: Wright was seriously undernourished much of his life, even into adulthood. Wright wanted to call the book American Hunger, a resonant title that suggests not just the hunger that African Americans have felt to belong to their country but also the hunger with which America has devoured them. Amazing that Wright survived not just that errant moment but his childhood at all.

In the first pages of his autobiography, Wright, a bored four-year-old, almost burns his grandmother’s house down, and the rest of the book is seldom less incendiary. Richard Wright, Black Boy (American Hunger) (1945/1991)

Cinquemila chilometri al secondo by Manuele Fior