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    Native Son (MAXNotes Literature Guides)
    Native Son (MAXNotes Literature Guides)
    Native Son (MAXNotes Literature Guides)
    Ebook129 pages1 hour

    Native Son (MAXNotes Literature Guides)

    By Richard Bucci

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    About this ebook

    REA's MAXnotes for Richard Wright's Native Son MAXnotes offer a fresh look at masterpieces of literature, presented in a lively and interesting fashion. Written by literary experts who currently teach the subject, MAXnotes will enhance your understanding and enjoyment of the work. MAXnotes are designed to stimulate independent thought about the literary work by raising various issues and thought-provoking ideas and questions. MAXnotes cover the essentials of what one should know about each work, including an overall summary, character lists, an explanation and discussion of the plot, the work's historical context, illustrations to convey the mood of the work, and a biography of the author. Each chapter is individually summarized and analyzed, and has study questions and answers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherResearch & Education Association
    Release dateJan 1, 2013
    ISBN9780738672977
    Native Son (MAXNotes Literature Guides)

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    Reviews for Native Son (MAXNotes Literature Guides)

    4/5

    1,315 ratings49 reviews

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    • 4/5
      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!
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      This was a really hard book to read. So much misunderstanding. What an awful time to live through.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      Provocative and entertaining, Native Son by Richard Wright, should be required reading. Wright uses words like razors, and the dialogue often reads with the urgency of a great pulp novel. In between the frightful action and terse dialogue, Bigger Thomas struggles with hazy feelings and thoughts fueled by centuries of racism and oppression and his own inability to articulate those thoughts. In the penultimate scene, his Communist defense attorney comes closer to understanding Bigger than anyone else, and correctly understands that often the actions of dehumanized people can be blunt, wrong-headed efforts to be more human, and are really caused by the rest of -- not directly, perhaps, but implicitly.
    • 4/5
      A must-read, even if not all of us agree with some of the political ideas expounded here (author Richard Wright was a Communist). This novel is thought-provoking, fast-paced but purposeful. Bigger Thomas is a young black man who commits some murders, and this looks at how the system and culture (whites and blacks) treats him before and after . One impression I had while reading was that we still have a long way to go regarding race relations 77 years after this was published.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      Plot is interesting and the concepts the author reveals are interesting, but the writing is a bit over the top for me.
    • 5/5
      Amazed that I am just now reading this classic for the first time. Saddened how really not much has changed.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      Through most of the novel, I was intrigued by Verne's descriptions and scientific explanations of the time period. Overall, it was an interesting story, but I was underwhelmed by the resolution and after finishing it, the whole thing seemed pretty anticlimactic. I think one has to go into reading a Verne novel with the expectations of fascinating and outdated science instead of focusing too much on the plot to really enjoy it.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      Native Son follows Bigger Thomas in his conflicted and troubling experience of being black in a world where to be black means to be poor and hungry; to be looked at with scorn, derision, and hatred; to be judged guilty, stupid, and ignorant; to constantly battle with overwhelming fear and roiling anger. Richard Wright does an excellent job at pulling us in to Bigger's world, his constant fears and his ocean of anger. When Bigger makes bad choices, we feel for him, we can understand how he is compelled to do these things, why they almost have to happen. We want to yell out, Stop! Wait! Just please think first!, but instead we are dragged right beside him through his downward spiral, through his confusion, panic, anxiety, elation, resignation."Things were becoming clear; he would know how to act from now on. The thing to do was to act just like others acted, live like they lived, and while they were not looking, do what you wanted. They would never know."Wright's writing is impeccable. I don't believe I have ever felt so tied in alongside a character before. I literally had to put the book aside for a few hours because I was so anxiety-ridden with him about what was going to happen "now," it was making me jittery. Wright had the desire of "'enclosing' the reader's mind ... to blot out all reality except that which" he provided us, and beyond a shadow of a doubt he succeeded."There was something he knew and something he felt; something the world gave him and something he himself had; something spread out in front of him and something spread out in back; and 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."Bigger's world is still out there today. It may not be as easily seen, the Black Belt may not exist in such distinct lines, but Bigger's problems haven't left. The police still round up black men for crimes they didn't commit, mob mentality when a person of color commits (or is merely arrested for) a crime is still an ordeal, as is the reverse of letting a white man off for violence against a black. Wright manages to paint a vividly clear picture of the problems and the emotions underlying them. He did not give us an easy book, he gave us a clear hard look at some very difficult things, and more people ought to read, and reread, this stark masterpiece of literature. Maybe it would help more eyes to open wider.
    • 4/5
      Painful, painful in the telling, in the reading, and in knowing that things aren't much different now. Seems like a book like this should have made more of a difference.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 2/5
      Strangely tragic, saddening yet profound. I didn't like it enough to ever pick it up again, mostly because I was frustrated with how the character behaved, but honestly, I have no idea if I would have done any differently.

      Exciting was the introduction of the communists as attempting to help him, despite the fact that he pinned it on a communist, and then that he rude to them. He doesn't understand much about them, and the real subject of total equality isn't really brought up, but they go to eat at a 'black neighborhood' restaurant, and they treat him like an equal. Before other members of society, he, a black man, is actually higher on the hierarchical scale than a communist. Only with prejudice.
    • 4/5
      Good novel of the black experience and injustice.
    • 5/5
      “…she was dead; she was white; she was a woman; he had killed her; he was black; he might get caught; he did not want to be caught; if he were they would kill him.”Bigger Thomas - a black man trapped in a white man's world. Angry, for so many reasons, and scared, for many of those same reasons. When those emotions collide, and he acts out, his world collapses. And it's not just Bigger who suffers. The wide social implications of his actions, steeped in racism, effect other Black members of his community and, of course, his family. This book delves deeply into the reasons why Bigger does what he does, and why the world in which he lives in is partly, if not mostly, responsible. It is as important a book to read now as it was when it was first written. If not more so... “How on earth are you going to change men’s hearts when the newspapers are fanning hate into them every day?” Jan asked. A question that still remains unanswered today.
    • 4/5
      Published in 1940, this book provides social commentary on race relations in the US. Protagonist Bigger Thomas commits a crime, though he never intended for it to happen. The story relates what happens in the aftermath. I am not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure what is spoken at the trial would not be allowed in present day (though I have no idea what would have been permitted in 1940). Nevertheless, the author is trying to make a point, and he makes it well. Many of these racial issues are (sadly) still relevant. I listened to the audio book. Peter Francis James does an amazing job with the voice acting – the distinct voices, inflection, and clarity are simply outstanding! I can see why this book is considered a classic.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      From Amazon: "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, Richard 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."
      My Thoughts: This is a very thought-provoking book, very deep, although it is easy to read (if that makes any sense!). It is long, but really has a lot to say. I had to read it in bits and pieces because it's pretty heavy. But it's been on my list for so long, and I'm really glad that I've read it now.
    • 4/5
      ""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.
    • 5/5
      This landmark classic is hailed as one of the greatest American novels. It tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a young black man living in Chicago in the 1940. He begins a job working for a wealthy white family and by the end of his first day his life is in chaos. The book is broken into three parts, Fear, Flight, and Fate. The first section introduces us to Bigger and we watch him commit a murder. From there his world spirals as everything comes crashing down around him. What might be interpreted as an accident soon becomes something darker and begins to taint everything in his life. Once he crosses that line he doesn’t look back and murder is no longer taboo. It releases something dark and evil inside of him and he finds himself being tempted to commit murder again. The brutality of one single act seeps into the rest of his life.The cyclical nature of black men’s lives during that time period parallels many of the poverty stricken areas in America today. One thing is expected from them and they react to that expectation. If they are judged before they have a chance to live it’s that much harder to make the right decisions, so instead one bad decision leads to another, violence leading to more violence. They are trained to hate other races from a young age. When someone shows them unexpected kindness they are taught to treat it with suspicion and resent it. “These were the rhythms of his life: indifference and violence.” One disturbing element in the book is the effect his actions have on the rest of the black community in Chicago. They are all being persecuted because of him. Many lose their jobs because their white employers are terrified of what they might do. Some want to protect Bigger; others want to turn him in. His actions are dividing the whole community. I wasn’t sure about this book until about ¾ of the way in. It just seemed to have no overarching lesson. It really clicked for me during Bigger’s trial. In the “Fate” section of the book we get to see a discussion of the expectations and opportunities for men like Bigger. I think one of the most interesting choices the author made was to make Bigger’s lawyer a Jew. Though he was still a white man, it was 1940 and as a Jewish man, Max could understand being persecuted for just being who you are better than most people. BOTTOM LINE: It’s hard to describe precisely how deeply haunting this story. It holds a mirror up to some of the ugliest aspects of human nature. It reminds us how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go. It breaks your heart and makes you angry all at the same time. It’s a difficult novel to read, but it’s an important one. “For the first time in his life a white man became a human being to him and the reality off Jan’s humanity came in a stab of remorse. He had killed what this man loved and had hurt him.”  
    • 5/5
      Bigger Thomas, a black man from the tenements of 1930’s South Side Chicago, lands a job as chauffeur for the wealthy Dalton family. The family treats Bigger kindly but it only makes him feel more uncomfortable in the foreign land of money and white society. Mary Dalton befriends Bigger and tries to include him in her union and Communist organizing. After a night of drinking and sex with her boyfriend, all of which Bigger is included in, he carries her to her bedroom. While there, he steals a kiss from the intoxicated woman just as her blind mother enters the room. Bigger smothers Mary, hoping to avoid detection, and then dumps her body in the furnace to hide his crime. Bigger is eventually arrested and convicted for his crimes.Wright’s novel is a commentary of its time, set in the social and political context of labor unrest, communism, and racial unrest before the Civil Rights movement. That’s not to say that there isn’t a timeless element to the social commentary of the book, but it is a bleak statement on the nature of race relations. Bigger’s final understanding in the book is that his two choices in life are to be what the white world expects of a black man or violently rebel against it. The lack of any middle ground or other alternative between these extremes reads differently in today’s world. Racism still exists, though it has gone more underground to survive. But many battles have been won against racism and its effects. I wonder if Wright could’ve imagined a black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs or a black President elected just 60 years after the publication of his book. Bottom Line: Important comment on racial and social politics, even if it is somewhat a product of its own time.4 bones!!!!!
    • 5/5
      brilliant.

    Book preview

    Native Son (MAXNotes Literature Guides) - Richard Bucci

    Bibliography

    SECTION ONE

    Introduction

    The Life and Work of Richard Wright

    Richard Nathaniel Wright was born on September 4, 1908, in Roxie, Mississippi. He was a grandson of slaves. His father was an illiterate sharecropper, and his mother was a schoolteacher. When he was five, Wright’s family moved to Tennessee, but his father soon deserted them, and from the age of ten, Wright had to interrupt his schooling to earn money. The family was not only faced with extreme poverty, but also with terrifying racial violence. When Richard was living with his aunt and uncle in Arkansas, his uncle was murdered by a white mob. Despite all the hardships he faced as a child, however, Richard managed to excel in school. By the time he completed the ninth grade, books were his constant companions.

    Although Wright would leave the South forever when he was only nineteen, it is not surprising that his early life there made the deepest impressions on his personality, and supplied him with much of the subject matter for his later writings. What is remarkable, however, is that Wright accomplished his own transformation into a literary person there, while yet a teenager, and against almost impossible odds. He was poor, black and only semi-educated, and, most forbiddingly, he was subject to constant and often potentially deadly racist harassment. Readers can learn about the depth of his transformation, and the obstacles he faced while achieving it, from Wright’s own compelling testimony in Black Boy, his autobiography. Wright described one defining moment of his self-education in especially vivid terms. When he was eighteen and working for an eyeglass company in Memphis, Tennessee, he read a story in a newspaper which attacked the writer H.L. Mencken. He became curious about why a white-owned newspaper would attack a prominent white writer, and decided that he must read Mencken’s own writings. He had no money to buy books, and as an African American, he was forbidden to borrow books from the library. Wright took a risk and asked a fellow white employee—an Irish Catholic who was therefore also subject to the prejudices of other whites—if he could use his library card, and pretend he was borrowing books for him. The man agreed, and Richard Wright at last had his encounter with H.L. Mencken’s A Book of Prefaces:

    That night in my rented room...I opened A Book of Prefaces and began to read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen, consumed with hate, denouncing everything American, extolling everything European or German, laughing at the weaknesses of people, mocking God, authority. What was this? I stood up, trying to realize what reality lay behind the meaning of the words... Yes, this man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club. Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for here they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as a weapon? No. It frightened me. I read on and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it.

    Occasionally I glanced up to reassure myself that I was alone in the room. Who were these men about whom Mencken was talking so passionately? Who was Anatole France? Joseph Conrad? Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Dostoevski, George Moore, Gustave Flaubert, Maupassant, Tolstoy, Frank Harris, Mark Twain, Thomas Hardy, Arnold Bennett, Stephen Crane, Zola, Norris, Gorky, Bergson, Ibsen, Balzac, Bernard Shaw, Dumas, Poe, Thomas Mann, O. Henry, Dreiser, H. G. Wells, Gogol, T. S. Eliot, Gide, Baudelaire, Edgar Lee Masters, Stendahl, Turgenev, Huneker, Nietzsche, and scores of others? Were these men real? Did they exist or had they existed? And how did one pronounce their names? (Black Boy, p. 293)

    Before too long, and with the help of his borrowed library card, Richard Wright filled in as many of the blank spaces in his learning as he could, absorbing book after book, like a starving man put before a Thanksgiving table.

    In 1927, when he was nineteen, he and his aunt joined the great African-American migration to the North, settling in Chicago’s vast South Side ghetto. Initially, Wright was in awe of his new surroundings, but he was already watchful, and concerned about the plight of African Americans, and poor people generally. Although he found racism everywhere in segregated Chicago, it was neither as profound nor as potentially deadly as it was in the South. Blacks and whites mingled in railway stations, streetcars, and downtown restaurants. The poor neighborhoods, black and white, seethed with subversive political activism, something Wright had never seen in the South. At first he was attracted to the black nationalist movement led by Marcus Garvey, but he eventually rejected Garvey’s political philosophy as too narrow. Instead, Wright began his long involvement with communism, both because he felt the communists were more active than the nationalists in the day-to-day struggles of African Americans, and because the stated aim of communism was to break down the walls between black and white workers and build a new society free of all forms of oppression. In 1932, while working in the Chicago post office, some of his white co-workers invited Wright to a meeting of the John Reed Club. John Reed was an American writer who participated in the 1917 socialist revolution in Russia, and the American Communist Party set up literary clubs in his name across the country. Wright sooned joined both the John Reed Club and the Communist Party, and he began to contribute political poems and essays to such left-wing periodicals as Anvil, Left Front, and The New Masses. He also honed his skills by participating in the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Project Administration (WPA), a depression-era government program designed to provide work for the nation’s millions of unemployed.

    Wright thus simultaneously launched a literary and a political life in Chicago at the dawn of the 1930s—the decade of the Great Depression. By 1937, he was encouraged enough by his own writing talent to risk relocation to NewYork, the nation’s literary capital. There he soon became the Harlem correspondent for the Daily Worker, the Communist Party newspaper, and he also resumed publishing a series of five powerful stories about the South, which he had mainly written in Chicago. One of these stories, Fire and Cloud, won an important prize as the best fiction written by a WPA writer. The prestigious award brought Wright to the attention of the New York literary establishment. In 1938—less than one year after he had left Chicago—Harper & Brothers published his entire series of stories in a book entitled Uncle Tom’s Children. Its artistic genius and its penetrating awareness of the painful truths of racism and poverty in America were undeniable. The book achieved immediate and nearly

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