"Wright was an American phenomenon. Lenin, during the Russian Revolution, looked at the jubilant former serfs who'd changed the course of history. Wouldn't he be thinking also of one like this one when he dreamed of creating a new man? Phenomena-especially Black ones-can't be measured by ordinary standards. Perhaps this is what W. E. B. DuBois had in mind when he said, "We struggle not only for the right of Blacks to be right but also for their right to be wrong!" Wright was a prodigious reader and he never failed to credit the extraordinary 10-year leap from semi-illiterate Black serf to literary giant to his discovery of Marx, Engels and Lenin, which subsequently led to his membership in the Communist Party. Mississippi had taught him to despise capitalist exploitation and injustice."