A review by rlchen383
Native Son by Richard Wright

challenging dark sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book stunned me. From the outset, you root for Bigger but have a sinking feeling in your gut that something has to go wrong. Tragically it goes wrong in a horrible way, and he is left fleeing from everyone he knows and more people who paint him as the prototypical dangerous Black man. In my "Black Manhattan" class, we read this and watched some of the HBO adaptation, which was striking in its cinematography but also in how it spliced together sections of this novel. Need to revisit both later
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