Native Son
by Richard Wright
Summary
Bigger Thomas, a poor young Black man living on Chicago's South Side, takes a job as a chauffeur for a wealthy white family and, after an accidental killing spirals into panic and further violence, finds himself hunted through a city determined to see him as nothing more than the crime he committed. Wright refuses to soften Bigger into a sympathetic martyr, instead using his rage and fear to indict the racism that shaped him from birth. The novel became one of the first books by a Black American author to reach a mass white readership and remains a landmark of American protest fiction.
Historical Context & Significance
The 1941 Pulitzer for fiction went to no book at all, after the board rejected the jury's recommendation of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Wright's novel was never seriously considered for the prize in that racially divided era. The Book of the Month Club selection of Native Son still made it an immediate bestseller despite receiving no major literary award.