Richard Wright

Richard Nathaniel Wright wrote with a fury that forced white America to confront the reality of Black life in ways it had never been forced to before. His 1940 novel Native Son was the first book by a Black author to be selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club, and it sold 250,000 copies in its first three weeks — an unprecedented success that proved there was a massive audience for unflinching portrayals of racial oppression. His 1945 autobiography, Black Boy, is considered one of the greatest American memoirs.

Born on a plantation near Natchez, Mississippi, in 1908, Wright grew up in crushing poverty. His father abandoned the family, his mother suffered a stroke, and he was shuffled between relatives and an orphanage. He left school after ninth grade but was a voracious reader who educated himself at the public library — using a white co-worker's card, since Black people were barred from borrowing books.

Wright moved to Chicago during the Great Migration and became involved with the Communist Party, which gave him a political framework for understanding racial oppression. Native Son's protagonist, Bigger Thomas, was a young Black man whose circumstances led to violence — a portrayal that shocked readers and generated fierce debate about race, poverty, and systemic injustice. Wright later expatriated to Paris, where he spent the rest of his life, unable to bear the weight of American racism.