In the mid1930s Richard Wright drafted an early version of The Man Who Was Almost a Man as a chapter in a novel about the childhood and adolescence of a Although Dave (LeVar Burton) and his family are poor sharecroppers in the Deep South in the 1930's, this 15 year-olds problem is shared teenagers today: he stands with one foot in Leslie Lee, Richard Wright (story) LeVar Burton's performance as the protagonist desperately Themes: The Coming of Age:Throughout the story Dave feels that his sense of manhood is threatened. He is stuck in between boyhood and