Authors: Richard Wright, Arnold Rampersad
ISBN-13: 9780060837563, ISBN-10: 006083756X
Format: Paperback
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Date Published: August 2005
Edition: (Non-applicable)
A trailblazing African-American novelist, playwright, and memoirist, Richard A. Wright brought the experiences of the twentieth-century ghetto into the realm of high art with his blockbuster 1940 novel Native Son. He went on to mix autobiography and fiction, and to become one of the most celebrated writers -- black or white -- of his era.
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.
Native Son taught me that it's all right to have passion within your work.