Native Son

Exactly.

Now contrast that with Richard Wright's Native Son, set in 1930 Chicago.

The main character, Bigger Thomas, has the opposite problem of invisibility.

He does.

Native Son deals with hypervisibility, but strictly through the lens of dangerous prejudiced expectations.

Bigger Thomas is trapped in a claustrophobic systemic cycle of extreme poverty and racial violence.

And Wright doesn't pull any punches with his protagonist.

Yes.

that Richard Wright book? The famous Richard Wright book.

Native Son.

That's what Child of the Ghetto, that's the 99, 2000, 2001 version of Native Son.

This is a nigga from the ghetto that's telling that story.

He told his whole life from 89 up until the point.

I'm going to take a minute to recover from that.

Okay, well, I have been reading, I've been listening to the audiobook for Native Son by Richard Wright.

I have now done listening to the audiobook for Native Son by Richard Wright.

I spent, I would say, the first half of my experience of that basically increasingly dreading the idea of reading that book to the point where I like my wife would be like, can you go to the store and pick something up? And I'd be like, no, I don't want to.

Cause then I would have to listen to my audio.

I'm big on speaking up on yourself.

Overall, book I'm reading right now, Native Son.

If you haven't read that, pretty good book.

I'm not big on fiction, honestly.

This is pretty much exactly what happened to Richard Wright in 1944.

So, he had published Native Son in 1940 to great acclaim, very successful novel.

In 1944, he completed Black Boy, then called American Hunger, and he had placed it with Harper and Brothers Publishing Company in New York, and they were very happy with it.

It had a first part called and a second part called The Horror and the Glory.

So, what is autobiography? What is this genre that Wright is working with? It raised these kinds of questions on the one hand, but then there was another kind of question, and that was coming from the other side.

This is what William Faulkner wrote to Wright upon reading He said, the good lasting stuff comes out of one's individual imagination and sensitivity to and comprehension of the sufferings of every man, any man, not out of the memory of one's own grief.

I hope you will keep on saying it, but I hope you will say it as an artist, as in Native Son.

So, Faulkner's objection is on the other side.

The rule is that these people born into poverty have a pathology." You know who well said that? Richard Wright.

That's basically what Native Son is about.

These people born into immense poverty for generations will produce A pathological spawn that you can do nothing with.

He called them little Eichmanns.

I guess.

Don't read Native Son? No, I mean, read Native Son because it's a classic, but only read it once because it's a lot.

I don't love Native Son.

Native Son by Richard Wright.

Honestly, I got a B for Richard Wright, but that's not really for this episode.

So true, Bestie.

So the first one, obviously we've talked at length about, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.

Then My Ántonia by Willa Cather, Native Son by Richard Wright, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which that last one is not exactly a classic, but [laughs] it's one that I've been meaning to read for a while, and also I thought it was important to include an indigenous work in my personal curriculum about American literature, so.

It doesn't seem too soon to call that a hugely influential American book.

Yeah, I would agree with that-