We're die-hard literature geeks, and if we started telling people 'You have to read this!' chances are we'd amend that statement with 'And this! And this! And this!' until we'd given our entire personal libraries away on loan ( the horror!). We don't usually go for the 'You have to read this!' tactic. What is Native Son About and Why Should I Care? But it's also one of the-if not the-most important books you'll ever read. In fact, it's harder than watching a Lars von Trier film festival while listening to someone play the musical saw. He was addressing the fact that the suffocating, cloistering and infuriating racial prejudice of the middle of the 20th Century created (totally unsurprisingly) feelings of anger and anguish among black people. Author James Baldwin wrote that, 'No American N**** exists who does not have his private Bigger Thomas living in his skull.'Īnd no, Baldwin wasn't disturbingly talking about little fictional characters hanging out in his brainpan. It also served as a massive wake-up call for the American public. The sales of Native Son made Wright the wealthiest black writer of the time, and sealed his reputation as one of the most acclaimed American writers. as well as deeply, skin-crawlingly uncomfortable about the hideous, monstrous, all-expletives-are-still-not-enough-to-express-the-nausea-we-feel way that mid-century America treated black people. And not only that, but it's a novel that makes you feel both sympathy and empathy for the murderer. As a Time magazine article notes, Wright had written an insanely difficult novel-one about a black man justly accused of murder whose actions were nevertheless shaped by cultural, social, and economic forces that he couldn’t control. But the fact that Native Son met with controversy is about as surprising as the fact that kitten videos cheer people up.

Published in 1940, Native Son was an instant success, even as it met with some controversy. Art like, for example, Richard Wright's Native Son. We're talking about something way, way more upsetting than that: art that portrays the horror that can exist in everyday life. We're not even talking about something that looks like a messed up nightmare-scape-like the art of Egon Schiele or Frida Kahlo. We're not talking about visceral horror like the stuff in Saw or supernatural horror like the stuff in Paranormal Activity. We're not talking about things that are gross (although we heart John Waters movies). It's no secret that some of the most amazing-and, perhaps more importantly, important-art is difficult to encounter.

Native son by richard wright