Richard Wright's Native Son
A Routledge Study Guide
Routledge – 2004 – 176 pages
Series: Routledge Guides to Literature
Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) is one of the most violent and revolutionary works in the American canon. Controversial and compelling, its account of crime and racism remain the source of profound disagreement both within African-American culture and throughout the world.
This guide to Wright's provocative novel offers:
Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of Native Son and seeking not only a guide to the novel, but a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds Wright's text.
Introduction Part 1: Texts and Contexts Richard Wright: A Brief Biography. The Voices of Native Son. The Dostoevskian Voice. The Transplantation of the Blues. Bigger’s Vernacular Voice. Social Determinism: An Anti-American Accent? Bigger: Silenced by Whiteness? Chronology Part 2: Critical History First Responses: James Baldwin. First Responses: Ralph Ellison and Irving Howe. Feminist Readings. The Black Atlantic and Beyond Part 3: Critical Readings Many Thousands Gone James Baldwin (1951) The Shadow of the White Woman: Richard Wright and the Book-of-the-Month Club Hazel Rowley(1999) From No Man's Land to Mother-Land: Emasculation and Nationalism in Richard Wright's Depression Era Urban Novels Anthony Dawahare (1999) Slouching toward Beastliness: Richard Wright's Anatomy of Thomas Dixon Clare Eby (2001) Invented by Horror: The Gothic and African American Literary Ideology in Native Son James Smethurst (2001) Part 4: Web Resources and Further Reading
Andrew Warnes is a lecturer in American literature at the University of Leeds. He has published on the novels of Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison.