Native Son (1940)

My first exposure to Richard Wright, years ago, was an excerpt in a college class from his autobiography Black Boy, and I later followed up to read Black Boy in its entirety, which I thought was incredible. I’ve only just gotten around to Native Son, though, the work he’s probably best-known for. While I’m still digesting it, the novel is undeniably fascinating (premise spoilers.)

Bigger Thomas, a young Black man living in Chicago during the Great Depression, is a combustion waiting to happen. Inside, he roils with the injustices he faces at the hands of white folks, both personal and systemic. When he gets a job working as a driver for a wealthy white family in the city, his sudden proximity to that world ignites a firestorm, and a moment of panic in the dark soon has the entire city swept up in a shocking crime, one the perpetrator can barely articulate why he committed.

Reading the book, you can tell that Wright is in it more for the ideas than the story. Plenty of time is spent, not just telling you what Bigger is thinking, but explaining why he thinks that, all the societal forces that shape him and spur him on toward his fate. It can border on treatise at times, and while it’s a gripping commentary, it’s the sort of writing that comes across much better in nonfiction, and as such, while I loved its use in Black Boy, it feels a little clunkier here. To use a modern-day comparison, you see a number of progressive-leaning TV shows trying to thread this needle – you can tell a great story along the themes of social justice, but depending on how you tell it, the effect can come across as just preachy instead of compelling, even among people who agree with the ideas being espoused.

However, I don’t want to get too down on the book for this aspect. It reminds me of an old post I did comparing The Normal Heart to Rent. I noted how The Normal Heart is much more overt and in-your-face about the ravages of the HIV epidemic, with characters regularly delivering soapbox speeches to the audience, but I also noted that Larry Kramer wrote that play during the height of the crisis at a time when the majority of people weren’t listening or caring. As he watched friends and loved ones die around him, he didn’t feel the luxury of packaging his message nicely. I get some of the same vibe with Wright here. When he wrote the book (and sadly, it’s still true for a lot of people now,) a huge chunk of the American public probably figured they knew exactly what “a Bigger Thomas” was like: good-for-nothing, criminal, dangerous, overpowered by lust for white women. When they saw Bigger Thomases in the newspaper who were arrested, who were convicted, who were jailed or executed, they thought, “Good!”, and they slept more easily at night.

But Wright sets out, not so much to show you who Bigger Thomas is, but why he is the way he is. That’s why he spells it out, why he drives home his points multiple times and explains them thoroughly, because he knows he’s addressing people who have never looked at the bigger picture. They’ve never given a Bigger Thomas the benefit of wondering why he makes the choices he does, what drives him. They see black and white, guilty and innocent, but they don’t see the layers of systemic inequality that mold the world around Bigger until he feels trapped in it. Wright never justifies Bigger’s actions or absolves him of them, but he contextualizes Bigger in that hopes that, just maybe, he’ll get someone to think twice the next time they read about a Bigger Thomas in the paper.

Warnings

Violence, sexual content, language (including racial slurs,) disturbing images, drinking/smoking, and strong thematic elements.

Black Boy (American Hunger) (1945)

Years ago, I read an excerpt of this book for a college class, and ever since, it was on my list of “books to read someday.”  My to-buy book list on Amazon is long enough that I never prioritized it there, but not long ago, I happened upon a copy at my local used book store and snatched it up.

A memoir by novelist Richard Wright, Black Boy (American Hunger) chronicles his hard growing-up years in early-20^th-century Mississippi and his eventual escape to Chicago, where the promised American dream of the North isn’t as freely available as he’d hoped.  From the gnawing poverty to the soul-crushing racism, from the self-nurtured hunger for literature to the explorations of new political ideas, the book describes a tense journey of self, society, and what manhood means to a person who’s had the rites of manhood denied him based on the color of his skin.

This is an excellent book, and I’m glad the copy I found was recent enough that it included both sections of the story.  When it was originally published, the memoir only included Wright’s years in the South, ending with his departure to Chicago.  Part 2, his experiences in the North, weren’t published in their entirety until after Wright’s death more than 30 years later, and the whole work wasn’t released together in one volume until 1991.  I think it’s important to have both.  Many people, like Richard, probably have a general sense that his struggles with racism and marginalization are largely over when he leaves the South, but that isn’t the case.  Although it’s comforting in the North, to think of past chronic racism as a “Southern issue,” the North had (and continues to have) its own problems surrounding race, and Wright’s migration doesn’t equal deliverance.  Certainly, it’s of a different tenor and type, but it’s there all the same.

There’s so much to explore within this book.  The taut beauty of the prose, the child/teen focal point, and the Jim-Crow-era setting makes me think of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, although it is very much its own work.  Just the fact that Richard is a boy makes his experiences very different.  His temper and impulsive reactions get him labeled as trouble-making, volatile, even dangerous, from a very young age, and his teenage years are haunted by a constant threat of violence from those who think he doesn’t know his place.  He’s punished, prayed for, and passed from relative to relative, and he cycles through job after job – going in and out of school as his family’s ability allows – struggling to earn enough to keep his biting hunger at bay while acquiring a reputation for having a temperament unsuited for working for white people.  He survives because he refuses to starve.  He tries to kick down every wall he comes across.  And he pulls cons to get books, because the written word gives his soul more nourishment than anything he’s ever encountered.  He believes he can use his education to get himself out, yes, but it’s more than that.  It makes his world larger and his mind stretch further, and it sustains him in an environment where everything seems harsh and hateful.  Is it any wonder that he tries to pass that love down in such an exquisitely-written book?

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, language (including racial slurs,) violence, sexual content, and drinking/smoking.