When poverty-stricken African-American Bigger Thomas inadvertently murders a young white woman in 1930's Chicago, the extreme weight of a class divided, racist and oppressed society falls heavily on his broad shoulders. It flattens him.
In 1940, Richard Wright published what, perhaps, could be the most starkly poignant and morally bankrupt American novel. The desperation, fear, manipulation, poverty and hopelessness portrayed by the angry and unrepentant main character offers a vivid portrayal of racism and class distinction in a supposedly free 20th Century American landscape. The chains that bind Bigger Thomas, his family and the liberal "friends" that try to help him are the chains of a lifetime of racism, the weight of an age and the weld of stupidity and fear. Truly a great American novel, Native Son opens a closet door in the basement of America's past that is sometimes best left closed. But, like Pandora's Jar of pain and illness, the released evil also contains a warming blanket of hope.
Check catalog for other great Richard Wright titles.
Submitted by Dan