Selling more than 215,000 copies in the three weeks following its American debut, Richard Wright’s 1940 novel, Native Son, successfully captivated readers nationwide. The story of Bigger Thomas—a hardened, murderous black 20-year-old confronting poverty in Depression-era Chicago—thrust audiences into a complicated conversation about race and racism in America. The book garnered comparisons to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and earned Wright the title of America’s “best Negro writer.”
