On Richard Wright's Centennial: The Great Outsider
Against The Current vol. 138
Wald, Alan
http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/2031
Date Written: 2009-01-01
Publisher: Against The Current
Year Published: 2009
Resource Type: Article
Cx Number: CX13474
In the spring of 1940, Richard Wright’s Native Son was published to such acclaim that Black Marxist C.L.R. James decreed the novel “not only a literary but also a political event.” By means of a riveting naturalist fictional technique, depicting the world through the eyes and ears of a 20-year-old unemployed African American named Bigger Thomas, Wright evokes the volatile brutality of poverty and segregation on Chicago’s South Side during the latter part of the Great Depression.
