The 1940 novel by Richard Wright about a young Black man in Chicago was Native Son. Its protagonist, Bigger Thomas, lives in poverty on Chicago’s South Side during the 1930s. After taking a chauffeur’s job with the wealthy Dalton family, Bigger becomes trapped in a chain of fear, violence and concealment that exposes the effects of racism, segregation and economic deprivation.
Wright does not present Bigger’s crimes as excusable, but he examines the social forces that shape his choices. The novel’s courtroom sections make that argument directly through Bigger’s lawyer, Boris Max, who contends that Bigger is a product of the society around him. This combination of graphic violence, sexuality, profanity and racial anger has made the book a frequent target of school and library challenges.
The original 1940 edition was also altered: a masturbation scene was removed at the request of the Book-of-the-Month Club. That scene was restored in the first complete edition published by the Library of America in 1991. Readers sometimes confuse Native Son with Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, another major African-American novel, but Ellison’s book was published in 1952 and has a different protagonist and narrative.