false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166676407m/15622.jpg 15622 34 Bigger Thomas is doomed, trapped in a downward spiral that will lead to arrest, prison, or death, driven by despair, frustration, poverty, and incomprehension. As a young black man in the Chicago of the '30s, he has no way out of the walls of poverty and racism that surround him, and after he murders a young white woman in a moment of panic, these walls begin to close in. There is no help for him--not from his hapless family; not from liberal do-gooders or from his well-meaning yet naive friend Jan; certainly not from the police, prosecutors, or judges. Bigger is debased, aggressive, dangerous, and a violent criminal. As such, he has no claim upon our compassion or sympathy. And yet...<p> A more compelling story than <I>Native Son</I> has not been written in the 20th century by an American writer. That is not to say that Richard Wright created a novel free of flaws, but that he wrote the first novel that successfully told the most painful and unvarnished truth about American social and class relations. As Irving Howe asserted in 1963, "The day <I>Native Son</I> appeared, American culture was changed forever. It made impossible a repetition of the old lies [and] brought out into the open, as no one ever had before, the hatred, fear and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our culture."<p> Other books had focused on the experience of growing up black in America--including Wright's own highly successful <i>Uncle Tom's Children</i>, a collection of five stories that focused on the victimization of blacks who transgressed the code of racial segregation. But they suffered from what he saw as a kind of lyrical idealism, setting up sympathetic black characters in oppressive situations and evoking the reader's pity. In <I>Native Son</I>, Wright was aiming at something more. In Bigger, he created a character so damaged by racism and poverty, with dreams so perverted, and with human sensibilities so eroded, that he has no claim on the reader's compassion: <blockquote>"I didn't want to kill," Bigger shouted. "But what I killed for, I am! It must've been pretty deep in me to make me kill! I must have felt it awful hard to murder.... What I killed for must've been good!" Bigger's voice was full of frenzied anguish. "It must have been good! When a man kills, it's for something... I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em. It's the truth..."</blockquote> Wright's genius was that, in preventing us from feeling pity for Bigger, he forced us to confront the hopelessness, misery, and injustice of the society that gave birth to him. <I>--Andrew Himes</I> 3159084 book 1940 Native Son (Perennial Classics) total:9253|5:145|4:152|3:116|2:38|1:9| 9253 35899 11961 880 5 6 false false Wed Oct 08 11:59:49 -0700 2008 Tue Oct 20 06:04:59 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 10 false false Wed Dec 26 13:53:20 -0800 2007 Wed Dec 26 13:54:17 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 3 false false Mon Feb 18 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 28 20:49:25 -0800 2008 Tue Mar 25 13:10:58 -0700 2008 Title: Native Son
Author: Richard Wright 624 Page paperback
ISBN-14, 979-3-17-148411-6,
Native Son is a third person narrative that intimately revolves around an African American named Bigger Thomas in the 1930's. He lives in poverty with his family and ...more...]]> 5 3 false false Wed Apr 23 06:05:27 -0700 2008 Wed May 14 06:14:26 -0700 2008
The story Native Son written by Richard Wright has been banned, its success has been vandalized, and many people who enjoy the experience of taking life and converting it to ink have yet to flip through its pages because of the on going rumors that suffocate libraries and boo...more...]]> 3 2 false false Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Dec 22 03:12:59 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 22 03:12:59 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Oct 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 21 12:03:06 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 26 16:59:02 -0700 2009 0 more...]]> 3 1 false false Thu Aug 28 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 23 17:09:05 -0700 2008 Thu Aug 28 20:47:45 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Apr 09 07:47:06 -0700 2008 Wed Apr 30 11:54:06 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1 1 false false Thu Mar 27 19:36:49 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 15 19:56:10 -0700 2008 I didn't like the book because I wa...more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Jan 12 11:11:16 -0800 2009 Mon Dec 22 14:03:06 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 12 11:11:16 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 12 20:17:56 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 12 20:24:46 -0800 2009 I just re-read it for the first meeting of an occasional book club.

This time it was a little more poignant for a couple reasons. First, I now live in Chicago, so I can relate to some of the physical surrounds that Wright describes. Secondly, ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Mar 29 14:19:13 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 29 14:33:06 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Mar 17 18:16:10 -0700 2009 Tue Mar 17 18:21:38 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Oct 26 16:20:07 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 26 16:59:24 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Oct 26 16:05:30 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 26 17:33:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Sep 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 26 14:42:55 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 26 15:25:01 -0700 2009 Once more...]]> 4 2 false false Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 21 05:38:24 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 21 15:59:20 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Aug 21 19:04:04 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 21 19:04:55 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Jul 27 14:26:50 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 27 14:41:08 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Tue May 26 04:54:36 -0700 2009 Tue May 26 05:06:00 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=15622