The passage describes Wright's experience with hunger from his youth. As a child, Wright's hunger felt normal and was satisfied by "a crust or two", but over time it grew into something more painful and hostile. Wright characterizes his early hunger as "a normal hunger" that made him beg for food, in contrast to the grim stranger that hunger became for him as it intensified physically, spiritually and intellectually over the years.

1. Embedding Quotes<br />“The hunger I had known before this had been no grim, hostile stranger; it had been a normal hunger that made me beg constantly beg for bread, and when I ate a crust or two I was satisfied” (Wright 14).<br />Although Wright’s hunger continued to grow, the feeling became a “normal hunger” (Wright 14).

2. Wright’s experience of hunger was intellectual, spiritual, and painfully physically: “a normal hunger that made [him] constantly beg for bread” (Wright 14).

3. For Wright, hunger was “no grim, hostile stranger,” thus it became a “normal hunger” that he grew accustomed to (Wright 14).

4. Wright’s experience of physical hunger “was no grim, hostile stranger…[but] a normal hunger” (Wright 14).

5. For many years Wright was physically starving, after even “a crust or two [he] was satisfied” (Wright 14).