Native Son - Richard Wright

Richard Wright

Category: General Fiction

Narrator: Peter Francis James

Tags: General Fiction, Novel, Adults

The novel tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African-American youth living in utter poverty in a poor area on Chicagos South Side in the 1930s., Bigger commits two ghastly crimes and is put on trial for his life. He is convicted and sentenced to the electric chair. His acts give the novel action but the real plot involves Biggers reactions to his environment and his crime. Through it all, Bigger struggles to discuss his feelings, but he can neither find the words to fully express himself nor does he have the time to say them., Wrights novel was an immediate best-seller, selling 250,000 hardcover copies within three weeks of its publication by the Book-of-the-Month Club on March 1, 1940. It was looked at as one of the earliest successful attempts to explain the racial divide in America in terms of the social conditions imposed on African-Americans by the dominant white society.