Native Son by Richard Wright

This novel has more insight and understanding about being black and poor in America, especially during segregation, than anything I've read.

Set in 1930's Chicago, it centers on the black Bigger Thomas, who kills a young white woman, Mary, and a young black woman, Bessie. With the aid of Mr. Max, his lawyer, a sympathizer who recognizes the social conditions that led Bigger to murder, and who dedicates himself towards fighting for equality, Bigger comes to realize the truth about himself and his relation to the world, and so too the emotional and psychological climate of race and poverty becomes evident to us.

In killing Mary, there was no motive; it wasn't even planned. She, like Mr. Max, treats Bigger kindly and as a human, not a black. They met only hours earlier, when Bigger took a job with her father as a chauffeur, to help provide for his mother, brother, and sister. But that night, when Mary's blind mother came into her bedroom, Bigger felt only fear: fear that his presence would be betrayed by Mary's drunken mumbling, leading him to smother her with a pillow. He knew, being black, he'd be in trouble if caught with a white woman in her bedroom. Indeed, all his life, white people told him how to act, where to live, how much education he could get; they told him what he can and can't do, how to speak, what jobs he's allowed to work. Basically, he always felt a white oppressive force upon his life, keeping him from fulfilling his dreams and from seeing himself as part of, not separate from, the world. All he knows is fear, hate towards whites, guilt and shame for being black, because everything has told him he's nothing, and Bigger believes it. This is what it means to be black, and that is what thrusts him to kill Mary. As Bigger puts it, it means he "'was guilty before he killed!'"

Wright doesn't justify Bigger's actions. But what this novel does is deftly depict race and poverty and the social conditions therein. I can see why this novel is considered one of the important books in twentieth century American fiction.