Native Son

Written by Richard Wright

Narrated by Peter Francis James

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels

“If one had to identify the single most influential shaping force in modern Black literary history, one would probably have to point to Wright and the publication of Native Son.” – Henry Louis Gates Jr.

""The most powerful American novel to appear since The Grapes of Wrath."" —The New Yorker

When it was first published in 1940, Native Son established Richard Wright as a literary star. In the decades since, Wright's masterpiece—hailed by Newsweek as ""a novel of tremendous power and beauty""—has become a revered classic that remains as timely and relevant today as when it first appeared.

Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Native Son is the story of Bigger Thomas, a young Black man caught in a downward spiral after killing a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Written with the distinctive rhythm of a modern crime story, this formidable work is both a condemnation of social injustice and an unsparing portrait of the Black experience in America, revealing the tragic effect of poverty, racism, and hopelessness on the human spirit. ""I wrote Native Son to show what manner of men and women our 'society of the majority' breeds, and my aim was to depict a character in terms of the living tissue and texture of daily consciousness,"" Wright explained.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caedmon
• Release date: Apr 28, 2009
• ISBN: 9780060886394

Richard Wright

Richard Wright won international renown for his powerful and visceral depiction of the black experience. He stands today alongside such African-American luminaries as Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison, and two of his books, Native Son and Black Boy, are required reading in high schools and colleges across the nation. He died in 1960.

Reviews for Native Son

[saudia89 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Native Son is a book about racism and poverty in America. The book centers around the life of Bigger Thomas, a young African-American who has grown up poor. He lives in a 1 bedroom dwelling with his mother and younger brother and sister. He gets a job as a chauffeur for a wealthy white family, but he resents them. Bigger has grown up being very aware of his dark skin and the difference between whites and blacks. Throughout the story we see how this awareness has affected all of the terrible decisions he makes. Bigger cannot even comprehend any act of kindness that is offered to him by his employers due to a life of receiving hatred from "their kind". Native Son takes transports you back to a time that America likes to forget about. It's not only a good read, but an important read for anyone wishing to understand why race is such a big issue in the USA.

[ghost_boy-691444 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really liked this book. Reminded me a lot of Crime and Punishment (need to reread that book at some point though). This took me longer than I thought mostly because it was intense. I mean it's about a back boy who murders two women and falsely accused of rape. It's hard to like any of the characters in the book. I think might be the point though and to show you the racism of whites to the blacks. Plus, this is a good crime novel.

[Michael Steger · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an American masterpiece, sadly as relevant today as it was in 1940. This audio performance is also a masterpiece, and deeply, deeply moving. I listened to it with my 18-year-old daughter. If I were a high-school teacher, I would have my class listen to it. It is a powerful performance of a great text.

[soubhikiewiet · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a really hard book to read. So much misunderstanding. What an awful time to live through.

[Sam Rhodes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An Excellent story with excellent narration . Im loving my subscription.

[danielstj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was an impressive novel. First, it manages to capture, in the main character, a misfit who has been turned out from society, cast along the ruins of the poor and the downtrodden in an urban environment. Then, it manages to capture race dynamics between black and white people, the state and the individual, and the heart of delinquency and social status. The trial scenes were particularly powerful. I really enjoyed the grand speech, the grand finale per se, that was given in the courtroom. It was a great piece of rhetoric and writing. The analysis given by Wright after the book was also illuminating and provides some literary criticism and depth for the book.3.75- worth it!

[suesbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The writing in this book was inconsistent, but the good writing was excellent. Wright presented a very negative protagonist in a way that I was able to feel deeply for him. I also learned so much about the personal results of constant oppression and treating people in an other, degrading manner.

[nandrews-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent read using the restored version. Wright gets long-winded during the trial scenes. The story is a vivid reminder of socio-political effects within our cultural history. Great fodder for ethical discussions about capital punishment.

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The story here is hard to take, and somewhat pathetic, but it is a fast read with a worthwhile tale, and Wright's writing makes the entire thing, characters included, seem far too real. I'd recommend it highly, but realize that it's not something I'd set for highschoolers or children, or something that will make you feel better about humanity in general.

[sandydog1_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this on audio and turned it off a couple dozen times. Disturbing, How disturbing? It makes "Crime and Punishment" read like "Chicken Soup for the Soul". The graphic plot morphs into some very long sermons and finishes with a stunning literary scene. Stick with it.

[michaeldc-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fantastic and important novel, bogged down a bit by a lengthy courtroom speech towards the end. The speech is important, don't get me wrong, and there are still plenty of people who need to read it (the whole "just work hard and you'll be successful" crowd), but it just dragged on what was a relentlessly intense and troubling book. I don't think there was any work of fiction like this before it was published in 1940, and I am certain it influenced more than a few civil rights leaders and activists in the 50s and 60s. I found Bigger's final realization about race relations to be especially compelling, and perhaps why the left fails to reach a good part of the white lower class (I don't want to give too much away.)

[cardiffgiant_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel successfully forces the reader to question the difference between right and wrong. Immediately, Wright gives the reader the portrait of a person (and his family) in horrible living conditions with no hope for a better life or an attempt at the American Dream. It is not long into the novel that Bigger is quickly confronted with an opportunity at upward mobility and his reaction is, naturally, distrust and rejection at those offers. Although we, as readers, are likely to question (and condemn) Bigger's actions, as the novel unfolds we find that all of these actions are part of a large problem. Wright does a masterful job of stopping short of telling us that Bigger's actions are justified in any way; instead, he focuses on why these things happen and how Bigger has been set up by a social structure that needs serious adjustment. One of the strongest political/social statements comes in the novels final 20-30 pages as Max gives his testimony in defense of Bigger. On top of all of the political and social messages that this novel has to offer, Wright has also created a character who is dealing with questions of his own existence and a strong desire to break out of that existence.

[stbalbach_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the great novels from the era, set the tone for many to follow, Wright was the father of African American civil rights literature. "There's a little Bigger in all of us".. Fate.

[andystardust · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What I took away from this: Wright's concept of a guilt so dreadful that, in order to escape it, a man decides that the people that are the source of his guilt are something less than human. That way, they are easier to ignore. Or to kill. This novel packs a wallop. Shares an odd kinship with Dreiser's American Tragedy, another murder/fugitive from justice/courtroom melodrama in a naturalistic vein. Recommended.

[br77rino · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The main character is Bigger Thomas, a big not-too-bright black man who gets caught up with rich communist white kids and gets into trouble.

[ahooper04 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this in high school, but can't remember much now!

[poetontheone · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wright's Native Son is a novel embodying a purely American existentialism. Bigger Thomas is a creature scrutinized and driven to rage by the nearly subconscious experience of his otherness. His actions are defined by the possible reactions of white people and the white establishment. His sickness in violence, and his rebellion is also violence. He cycles through feelings and attitudes of power, guilt, despair, and finally understanding. His true liberation is his final realization regarding the causation of his actions and what they mean, however horrendous. This is a novel that unflinchingly explores humanity, beyond color or class, by revealing the sickness of hatred on all sides.

[rizeandshine · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I expected Native Son to be a social commentary on racism in 1940's America, and it was. But, in some ways it was not the novel I was expecting. After a somewhat predictable, start the novel took a bit of an unexpected turn and I found it to be an involving, suspenseful read. The protagonist, Bigger Thomas, is a poor, uneducated black man who hates the whites for being in control and is ashamed of his family’s poverty. He is always getting into trouble and soon Bigger must make some monumental decisions. At first I sympathized just a bit with Bigger as he chooses a path of deception, but his crimes soon escalate until I had no sympathy for the main character. Bigger redeems himself slightly at the end of the novel, when he must confront his own actions and determine where social conditioning ends and free will begins. Unfortunately, instead of relying on the plot alone to make a statement about how racial inequality and social injustice create conditions for violence in urban America, the author gets a bit preachy via the final statement of a Jewish lawyer who is affiliated with the Communist Party. This portion of the tale really drags down an otherwise gripping and insightful novel. I would recommend Native Son but would not blame you for skimming over a bit of the overlong courtroom speech.

[jmcdbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Rated: B+Powerful book. Keeps you hoping things would turn out differently, but for this black American (Bigger Thomas) racial realities in the 1930's lead to a tragic story and ending.

[bness2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very dark and powerful novel often considered the top Black protest novel of the 20th century. It is a tragedy of epic proportions that in the process makes a very strong case for continued enslavement and oppression of Blacks by the White majority. Bigger, the main character, is an aimless and angry young man who gradually sinks deeper into crime after accidentally killing a White girl. Had Black/White relations been different, he would likely have never killed her. he story's pace quickens after the murder, as Bigger tries to keep from being blamed for the murder. The climax of the book comes in the courtroom, where he is being tried for his crimes. His attorney, a Jewish member of the Communist Part, in a prolonged defense statement lays out the whole reason that society produced a person like Bigger, and many other angry, violent Black men like him. A powerful and disturbing story.

[alcracka · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Here is the scariest character in literature. Even Wright is terrified of him. I had this thought as I finished Native Son: I thought, "This is the bravest book I've ever read." I've read a lot of protest books, a lot of warnings, but most authors give you a way out: "Look out, but here's what you should maybe try to do." With Bigger Thomas, Wright says, "Well, here's what you got." And...holy shit, man.

He's such a powerful force that Wright spends the entire last third of his own book basically saying "Holy shit!" Which is why this only gets four stars from me; that "Holy shit" is much weaker than the first two thirds, and I can't recommend this book to you without the caveat that the last 150 pages is pretty tough going.

So listen, I'm not gonna tell you to skip the last third because I'm not really important enough to say something like that, but in case you do, here's what happens: Bigger is not going to win that court case. There.

[mitchell_bergeson_jr · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow. Mr. Wright wrote a bold, emotional, brave and fierce book here. Its painful; it's thought provoking; it hits the reader like a full force punch to the gut (all great books should do this by the way).

The edition I read was the uncut (unaltered) version before the publisher, with outside prompting, requested some revisions. These revisions included tone, violent depictions and graphic sex. I was not bothered, nor offended, by anything in the original, and I couldn't imagine experiencing it any other way.

No review I could ever make could do Mr. Wright or this book justice. My only attempt to do justice to Wright would be to issue a plea to others to read this book! I thank my lucky stars that I promoted it on my to-read list - On occasion, great books are lost and forgotten there. Thankfully, Bigger's story wasn't lost and forgotten for me, and it will stay with me for a long time.

I could never relate to Bigger's story, but even so, it's not impossible to understand more and feel more because of it. Mr. Wright is a great writer and he really shows it here.

My favorite part was the last part - "Fate". I thought Bigger's lawyer Max did a hell of a job. I didn't mind the lawyer's long winded speech (plea for mercy). I ate it up; I adored it. It thrilled and floored me completely. Max's plea for life was a building up to the climax for me; the height of the drama; and perhaps, Mr. Wright's message for the reader. Max gave a heroic effort, but the reader will know how it ends well before Max finishes.

Highly Recommended.

[foof2you · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A man who feels the world against him gets a lucky break and proceeds to throw it all away. An interesting look at the racial differences from inner city to the upper class. The lawyers statements still hold true today in how some people feel about the racial divide and what separates the races. Richard Wright's writing is as true today as when this book was written, 1940.

[electrascaife · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Powerful, tense, and moving, this story of a young black man in 1950's Chicago stumbling from a life of petty crimes into one of a wanted and then convicted murderer via a series of tragically bad decisions is unbelievably stark and bleak and, above all, heart-breakingly relevant still. This is one of those books that should be required reading for everyone. Everyone.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book made me think and gave me insight into a different perspective, that of African Americans in 1940, a part of which has undoubtedly carried forward to today. It's intelligent, eloquent, and ahead of its time. Wright does a very smart thing in this book: he does not create a main character who is lovable and then victimized, he creates Bigger Thomas, a main character who is a monster, provides an understanding for how Bigger and many others like him come to be, and then does not apologize or justify the awful acts he commits.As a philosopher once said, do we complain when a pear tree produces pears? It's not a justification, but Wright says let's understand where violence comes from and accept it as an inevitable consequence of our society's actions. Along the line he portrays subtle and outright racism and anti-communism; it's frightening to realize just how real this was 70 years ago.It seems Wright took a lot of criticism for his style and for making the final part of the book drag on; I say it's really unfortunate that among those who did so was James Baldwin and jeez, cut the guy some slack. There are many others guilty of that kind of thing, Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn, Dostoevsky, and Ayn Rand, hoo boy and Ayn Rand; moreover, it seems to me that it wasn't so much that it was overly verbose, it was that the first couple of parts were so gripping, and the latter part was a bit more predictable, and the logical aftermath of the first parts.Quotes:"As long as he could remember, he had never been responsible to anyone. The moment a situation became so that it exacted something of him, he rebelled. That was the way he lived; he passed his days trying to defeat or gratify powerful impulses in a world he feared."On whites who sympathized but were "too nice"; along with later commentary that the rich who donate to 'boys clubs' were doing so out of a sense of guilt, and also were the first to deny renting houses to blacks in white neighborhoods, and to hire blacks in better jobs in their companies, either of which would have had more real benefit:"He felt naked, transparent; he felt that this white man, having helped to put him down, having helped to deform him, held him up now to look at him and be amused. At that moment he felt toward Mary and Jan a dumb, cold, and inarticulate hate.""Many a time he had stood on street corners with them and talked of white people as long sleek cars zoomed past. To Bigger and his kind white people were not really people; they were sort of great natural force, like a stormy sky looming overhead, or like a deep swirling river stretching suddenly at one's feet in the dark. As long as he and his black folks did not go beyond certain limits, there was no need to fear that white force. But whether they feared it or not, each and every day of their lives they lived with it; even when words did not sound its name, they acknowledged its reality. As long as they lived here in this prescribed corner of the city, they paid mute tribute to it."Quite a bit of edge ot this one:"Every time he felt as he had felt that night, he raped. But rape was not what one did to women. Rape was what one felt when one's back was against a wall and one had to strike out, whether one wanted to or not, to keep the pack from killing one. He committed rape every time he looked into a white face. He was a long, taut piece of rubber which a thousand white hands had stretched to the snapping point, and when he snapped it was rape. But it was rape when he cried out in hate deep in his heart as he felt the strain of living day to day. That, too, was rape.""...he had felt the need of the clean satisfaction of facing this thing in all its fulness, of fighting it out in the wind and sunlight, in front of those whose hate for him was so unfathomably deep that, after they had shunted him off into a corner of the city to rot and die, they could turn to him, as Mary had that night in the car, and say, 'I'd like to know how your people live.'But what was he after? What did he want? What did he love and what did he hate? He did not know........never in all his life, with this black skin of his, had the two worlds, thought and feeling, will and mind, aspiration and satisfaction, been together; never had he felt a sense of wholeness. Sometimes, in his room or on the sidewalk, the world seemed to him a strange labyrinth even when the streets were straight and the walls were square......He did not want to sit on a bench and sing, or lie in a corner and sleep. It was when he read the newspapers or magazines, went to the movies, or walked along the streets with crowds, that he felt what he wanted: to merge himself with others and be a part of this world, to lose himself in it so he could find himself, to be allowed to live like others, even though he was black."On the historical backdrop:"Each of them - the mob and the mob-masters; the wire-pullers and the frightened; the leaders and their pet vassals - know and feel that their lives are built upon a historical deed of wrong against many people, people from whose lives they have bled their leisure and their luxury! Their feeling of guilt is as deep as that of the boy who sits here on trial today. Fear and hate and guilt are the keynotes of this drama!....And we must deal here with the hot blasts of hate engendered in others by that first wrong, and then the monstrous and horrible crimes flowing from that hate, a hate which has seeped down into the hearts and modled the deepest and most delicate sensibilities of multitudes.""They were colonists and they were faced with a difficult choice: they had either to subdue this wild land or be subdued by it. We need but turn our eyes upon the imposing sweep of streets and factories and buidlings to see how completely they have conquered. But in conquering they used others, used their lives. Like a miner using a pick or a carpenter using a saw, they bent the will of others to their own. Lives to them were tools and weapons to be wielded against a hostile land and climate."

[viviennestrauss · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazed that I am just now reading this classic for the first time. Saddened how really not much has changed.

[kishields · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm pretty sure most readers would agree that the first part of the book is what has kept its reputation intact over the years since it was written. The depiction of Bigger Thomas's personality, thoughts, emotions and crimes is vivid and shocking, even while understandable, at least to a degree. The first half of the book is astonishingly relevant today, as we continue to struggle with racial understanding and conflict, all these years later.However, the book's vitality comes to something of a halt once Bigger is captured. At that point, a didactic plea for a Communistic view of society takes place through the mouth of the Jewish Communist lawyer, who takes on Bigger's case to prove a point.The ending feels true again as Bigger returns to his visceral experience of what it is to be young and black in racist Chicago and asserts his right to exist as exactly what he is - and, the author would have us believe, as society has created him. Well worth reading today, despite the preachiness of the second half.

[abbsalah · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is so important.It shows a pretty ugly side of race relations in America, but it is absolutely eye-opening. This story brings tragedy to a new scale. It hit a cord with me and has stuck with me for years; I have never been able to forget Bigger Thomas and his story.

[smiler69 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

""There he is!" the mother screamed again.A huge black rat squealed and leaped at Bigger's trouser-leg and snagged it in his teeth, hanging on."Goddamn!" Bigger whispered fiercely, whirling and kicking out his leg with all the strength of his body. The force of his movement shook the rat loose and it sailed through the air and struck a wall. Instandly, it rolled over and leaped again. Bigger dodged and the rat landed against a table leg. With clenched teeth, Bigger held the skillet; he was afraid to hurl it, fearing that he might miss. The rat squeaked and turned and ran in a narrow circle, looking for a place to hide; it leaped again past Bigger and scurried on dry rasping feet to one side of the box and then to the other, searching for the hole. Then it turned and reared upon its hind legs. "Chicago’s South Side, sometime in the 1930s. This is our introduction to Bigger Thomas and his family. They live in a rat-infested room in a tenement building, Mrs. Thomas, Bigger, and his younger brother Buddy and little sister Vera. They've just been woken up by a loud alarm-clock in the dark hours before dawn, and the long-tailed terror has made its appearance, scaring the women who screech and stand up on the bed, while the brothers, equally terrified, must deal with the foot-long vermin. Eventually Bigger gets the better of the beast and squashes it dead with the heavy skillet. Then he grabs it by the tail and dangles it in front of his terrified sister's face, just for the fun of it, and she faints. We are made to understand that this is normal behaviour for Bigger, who is normally sullen and temperamental and given to ignoring his family and seeking ways to amuse himself with regular trips to the cinema and occasional gigs robbing black neighbours with his little gang of friends. But on this morning, Mrs. Thomas is pressuring Bigger to go to a job interview. They need the money badly, and if he doesn't take the job, the family will be cut off from government relief payments which they rely on to put food on the table. But Bigger wants to do things his own way, and he's got a big plan to rob a local Jewish grocery shop owner for a really big payoff. He's scared though, as are his three partners in crime; this would be their first time targeting a white man, and they know the consequences if they get caught will be dire. But Bigger, conscious of his own fear, decides he won't be seen as a coward, and his solution for avoiding the whole plan that day is to violently assault one of his friends on the merest provocation.We've just begun the story, and already Wright has made us hate this 20-year-old boy. The reader is made uncomfortable. Here is a book denouncing racism, but our protagonist is violent, cruel to his own family and friends, and prideful to the point of murderous impulses to protect his sense of self. He seemingly has no redeeming features; is he a psychopath? Perhaps. At this point, I go back and read the introduction by Arnold Rampersad I had avoided initially, fearing the all too frequent spoilers usually found there. I find my feelings towards Bigger are vindicated. There are Biggers of every colour, everywhere in the world, he says. That's the part that sticks to my mind anyway, and now I feel freed from any obligation to sympathise with him.Bigger goes to the job interview. He meets Mr. Dalton in one of the nicest neighbourhoods in the city. An impressive house. They are very wealthy. Mr. Dalton is one of the most respected citizens of Chicago, a multi-millionaire who owns real-estate and thus incidentally and indirectly, the tenement building Bigger and his family live in. Mr. Dalton and his blind wife have a social conscience though, and they've given millions of dollars in aid to the city's black citizens. Bigger is to be their chauffeur, to replace the last black chauffeur, who was encouraged by Mrs. Dalton to attend night school in order to get a better job. Bigger is suspicious. He is suspicious of all white people, who have always held him back, crushed him down, prevented him from attaining his dreams. But the Daltons are different, and this troubles him deeply. Their daughter Mary barges into his interview with his future employer and starts demanding whether he is with a union; calls her father a capitalist. Bigger decides he hates the young woman. She is pretty, very pretty, but she is already making trouble for him. He's not quite sure what capitalism or communism is, but he's pretty sure she is one of them and he fears Mr. Dalton won't give him the job if he thinks Bigger is one of them too. But he does get the job, and his first task is to drive Mary to university that evening. But Mary doesn't want to go to university. Instead, she wants Bigger to drive her to her boyfriend's, who as it turns out, is a notorious Communist agitator. The couple wants to befriend Bigger, encourage him to call them by their first names, they are curious about his life, they want to better the condition of blacks in America. That evening, they force him to sit down and eat a meal at a local black hangout and get drunk with them. Things turn out badly. By two in the morning, Mary is dead, and Bigger is responsible. To cover up his tracks, he makes the situation much worse. Now he's on the run for murder. Being responsible for the death of a white woman means capital punishment for him, so he must stay in hiding, and by the evening after Mary's death, he's murdered another woman to prevent her from denouncing him. This is all terribly dark and his acts are abominably violent. But Wright has formed a taut, stark tableau that reads like the best kind of suspense thriller. You can't keep racing along to find out what will happen next.Bigger is caught, of course. You figure this out before you've even begun to read the book. Book 1 is called Fear. Book 2: Flight. Book 3: Fate. Nothing so far has given any indication that Bigger is on the right track or likely to see the light. This part of the book was the most problematic for me. The physical violence in Book 2 was revolting, sickening. But now in Book 3, Wright shows us racism in full force, and Bigger finally starts to become human. His defences are broken down, and he isn't a mere brute anymore, he questions himself, he seeks to be understood by someone. But the problematic part here is that this is also were Wright gets preachy in his attempt to drive home his point about the kind of world the blacks have been living in till now and what few choices and hope they've been given since their arrival in America, and now, in a Jim Crow nation. We are given to understand that Bigger is the symptom of a sick society. Of course, an enlighten reader can only agree with this. But there is too much rhetoric here. There is a long speech, many pages long, and if we already know that Wright was an active member of the Communist party, we can't help but feel that he is advancing Communist theories. I have nothing against Socialism, or even Communism where these ideologies meet with humanitarian concerns, in that sense I feel they are a powerful and necessary forces in the world, but for the problem that these ideologies go so deeply into the fabric of life and reframe everything in the light of us vs. them. Bigger doesn't understand a word of this speech, but he understand it's intent. I understood a little bit more than he did, but mostly I felt like I'd been hit over the head with a lot of theoretical jargon that only distanced me from what until then had been a visceral experience. No matter. This is an essential novel. It was relevant and necessary and groundbreaking when it was first published, and though many black writers have expressed their individual voices since then, it remains an essential novel today. This is the kind of book that marks you for life. I can't say I'll necessarily want to read it again, and for that reason it probably won't make the list of my favourite books this year, but it was an important read and a challenging one, and frankly, pretty gripping too, and one I feel has made me grow as a person and as a reader.

[mrlzbth_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'd been meaning to read this one ever since I read Black Boy in high school English (let's not think about how long that's been)--I was expecting a powerful book with insightful things to say about race relations in America. What I was not expecting was a suspenseful read that would get my heart pounding and be almost impossible to put down! Wright does a masterful job of putting the reader inside the head of Bigger Thomas, a twenty-year-old black man who gets himself into big trouble soon after starting work as a chauffeur for a white family. Appalled as I was by Bigger's gruesome crime, Wright really vividly captures the feelings of frustration, anger and fear that motivate him, and I felt as trapped as he did while I was reading. There are no easy answers in this book. I only ended up giving it 4 stars instead of 5 because there's a really long speech at the end that felt a little too much like Wright swooping in to lecture the reader about the broader cultural meaning of his plot.