Win Native Son Author Richard Wright Digital Copy
a powerful book. In narrative, theme, character and motifs, Wright uses his whole arsenal to show us the horrors of racism, He seems to be able to reflect back the experience of racismhow it's created and it's cycle of destruction, I've read other Black writers before, but this book is probably the one that has taken on and embodied racism more so than any other book for me.
For a novel written in, the book holds up quite well, Unfortunately, while our nation has made progress, especially some legal and institutional progress, this book and the picture it paints is still quite relevant today.
The book is very accessible, Wright's prose, while rhythmic and artful, is quite straightforward and easy to read, I can't recommend this book enough, and not just as a means to understand racism from more angles, shine a light on our own behaviors, but also as a gripping literary thriller that has stood the test of time.
Put it on your toread list,
Movie adaptation comment below
Update Aprilth,: Last night I watched the excellent adaptation of Native Son on HBO, While not strictly true to the source material, especially in some sections, and lacking in some ways that made the book exceptionally powerful, I would still recommend watching the movie of the same name.
I won't say much more because this isn't a movie review and I want to be careful of spoilers which I know is something people care deeply about.
If you've read the book the only thing to spoil is how the adaptation deviates from the source material, I won't say anymore on that topic, “Why they make us live in one corner of the city Why dont they let us fly planes and run ships ”
Bigger Thomas was not a nice man by any standards.
Any reader, man or woman, regardless of their skin colour black, white, red, yellow would encounter significant difficulty thinking of Thomas in more charitable terms than the description penned by the “editor of the Jackson Daily Star, regarding Bigger Thomas boyhood there.
” He wrote, ”Thomas comes of a poor family of a shiftless and immoral variety, He was raised here and is known to local residents as an irreformable sneak thief and liar, We were unable to send him to the chain gang because of his extreme youth, ” A childhood criminal, in other words, who followed his destiny to a court trial facing charges as a sociopathic and unrepentant adult multiple murderer and rapist.
No reader will shed a tear over Bigger Thomas, How could they No reader will have a moments sympathy for Mr Thomas, Nor will any reader empathize in any way with his plight, But, make no mistake. This is entirely as Richard Wright wanted it to be, When NATIVE SON readers turn the final page, it was always Richard Wrights hope that any disgust, any dismay, any heartbreak, any sorrow, any embarrassment, any shock, any anger, any emotion at all that a reader might experience, would arise out of his portrayal and scathing
indictment ofs white American culture.
It was not intended to generate pious pity for the black people who were forced to endure that culture, Indeed, the wealth of the white Dalton family and their use of it in ostensibly helping the local black population in Chicago, which THEY saw as pitiable, was demonstrated to be nothing more than ostentatious, sanctimonious and selfserving.
The metaphorical equivalent, if you will, of donating a few scraps of fish from time to time for a meager meal, while refusing to allow a black man the right to fish, denying him the ability to learn to fish, refusing to give him the right to own the equipment necessary to go fishing for himself, and forbidding him any access to the water in which the fish lived.
Wrights portrayal of the nature, the depth, and the completeness of the racism systemic to white American Jim Crow culture in the earlyth century will assuredly take any readers breath away.
But that hatred was not the only target at which he aimed his talent,
The antiSemitism that some might have considered to be endemic in North American white Christian culture at the time demonstrated that Hitlers WW II final solution and attempted genocide in the Holocaust did not happen in a global vacuum.
Fear of Stalins Russia and his brand of Communism led to the labeling of any variation of leftwing social thinking in America as Communism.
Even those progressive thinkers who advocated for such things as minimum wages, desegregation, or fair housing bought into the belief that they were espousing Communism.
They willingly and fearfully, I dare say proclaimed themselves to be members of a North American version of the Communist Party, The continuing propensity of the hardcore rightwing in the USA to label the likes of AOC, Ilhan Omar, Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as misguided, antiAmerican Commies did not happen overnight!
NATIVE SON is not an entertaining novel for even a single paragraph.
NATIVE SON is a bleak and discouraging novel to read from start to finish, But it is instructive and informative, evocative and thoughtprovoking, The closing address to the jury by Jewish Lawyer, Boris Max, in which he pleads for mercy for his client and advocates for life imprisonment over execution is positively riveting.
Whether it will be persuasive for any dedicated members of the modern right community who persist in their belief that blacks are a substandard variation of humankind is an open question.
Paul Weiss Uncomfortable, . . but necessary Infuriatingly brilliant! Outrageously gripping! This is my second book by Wright, His sitelinkBlack Boy was already one of my alltime favourites, but I think it fair to say that this novel at least equals it in scope and suspense.
The writing is flawless and keeps you on edge from the very first page, Few novelists build tension like sitelinkRichard Wright, Against the backdrop of a crowded, raciallysegregated Chicago, it's no wonder terrible things happen sometimes, So when there is one brash young white female involved and those longhaired Reds handing out pamphlets on the sly, you can guess this is not going to be pretty.
. .
The story is centered on the character of Bigger Thomas, a tough black youngster who wants to feel but once in his lifetime that he exists.
Up to the moment when he is caught back by fear and distrust, the most natural feelings he has ever experienced when dealing with white people.
Mr Max's final speech will be forever etched in my memory, A burning appeal for freedom and opportunities for all, It takes much courage to tackle racial issues as Wright did,
We're inand my heart was rending while reading this, just to imagine what it must have been for the midth century reader makes me giddy.
I heartily recommend it especially in the light of what is happening these days in the US the Amy Cooper incident and the likes are quite revealing in this respect.
You can't go wrong with sitelinkNative Son, Bigger Thomas will be haunting me for a while, This is literature at its very best, A gripping naturalist novel delving into the psychological toll of racism on Black interiority, Theres so much to critique about the work, from its misogyny to its clunky structure, but its influence and forceful condemnation of white supremacy make it still worth reading.
A challenging read. The easy route for the author Richard Wright would've been to write a novel asking us to sympathize with a black man wrongfully accused of murder in a racist community.
But he does not take the easy route, Instead he implores the reader to follow Bigger Thomas, a young black man who is absolutely guilty of committing a deplorable act for reasons which he himself cannot fully explain, and forces us to look at the circumstances which might have possibly created this complex man.
Although the book isn't perfect and every now and then especially in the lastpages delves into bloated preachiness, it still is very engaging and surprisingly suspenseful.
It forces you to consider how society in the's created a man, for whom fear and hate were the only emotions he's ever felt, and how those emotions can lead him to murder.
It challenges you to understand that although the murder is essentially accidental, Bigger knows he has done something wrong but is initially unrepentant, Because after lashing out in a situation he doesn't understand, it is the first time he feels alive, with a purpose and with the control of his own life in his hands.
A challenging and important book that pulls aside the curtain and looks dead on at the circumstances that create Bigger Thomas and at the social, class, and racial relations in our society.
“Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed, . . It is not a strategy consciously devised, It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality, ”I remember reading this book a long time agoit was recommended by our school, a lot of people cried after reading this and I wasn't any different
This book is quite controversial and was received with mixed feeling but even reading it again I still feel Bigger's pain and suffering
The setting took place when racism against blacks was far more pronounced and celebrated.
it was a horrible moment
I feel like there were some aspects where bigger would have made different choices but even then his wrong choices felt like what he had to do such as a black person.
it was awful
If things were different perhaps bigger won't have been where he was and hence not do what he did!! Updating my shelves.
I read this in high school for a book report, Being that I'm from the Chicago suburbs originally this was one of my first exposures to life in another part of the city and I found the book to be fascinating.
It would be interesting to reread it through adult eyes, .