Native Son by Richard WrightMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Not since Anna Karenina have my conceptions about a book been so mistaken (one that I definitely judged by its unwelcoming and intrusive cover). This went beyond a story depicting race relations in 1940's Chicago; Wright posthumously speaks to what poc deal with on a daily basis today, this one included.
I realize that as a Middle Eastern woman in the Bay Area I don't face the level of oppression as I would/did in the south, but there remains a haunting sense of self-loathing which penetrates the bridge between my olive skin and the white skin of others. A self-loathing captured in Native Son's jarring and disturbed main voice, Bigger Thomas. Wright's masterpiece is self-conscious without stuffing it down my throat; I relate to Bigger, even feel for him at certain points, all the while disgusted by his abject behavior. Zero sympathy, mild degrees of empathy. These are landmark feats.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
-The car sped through the Black Belt, past tall buildings holding black life.
-His being black and at the bottom of the world was something which he could take with a newborn strength. What his knife and gun had once meant to him, his knowledge of secretly murdered Mary now meant.
-This white man had come up to him, flung aside the curtain and walked in to the room of his life.
-Why this black gulf between him and the world: warm red blood here and cold blue sky there, and never a wholeness, a oneness, a meeting of the two?