Boxed set with later works

Richard Wright: Early Works
Richard Nathaniel Wright (September 4, 1908 - November 28, 1960) was an
author of novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction.
Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially related to the plight of
African Americans during the late 19th to mid-20th centuries suffering discrimination
and violence. Literary critics believe his work helped change race relations in the
United States in the mid-20th century
This book includes
Native Son exploded on the American literary scene in 1940. The story of Bigger Thomas,
a young black man living in the raw, noisy, crowded slums of Chicago’s South Side,
captured the hopes and yearnings, the pain and rage of black Americans with an
unprecedented intensity and vividness.
This volume also contains Wright’s first novel, Lawd Today!,
published posthumously in 1963, and his collection of stories,
Uncle Tom’s Children, which appeared in 1938. Lawd Today! interweaves news bulletins,
songs, exuberant wordplay, and scenes of confrontation and celebration into a
kaleidoscopic chronicle of the events of one day—February 12—in the life of a
black Chicago postal worker. The text for this edition reinstates Wright’s stylistic
experiments, and the novel emerges as a far livelier work of the imagination.

I realize the point Richard Wright is trying to make is one of social injustice and how racism can lead innocent people down the wrong path. I realize there is a sociological lesson to be learned from Native Son. Bigger Thomas is portrayed as a 21 year old African American sent out to work for the white man so that his mother and younger siblings have a place to live. With the 1930s as the backdrop it is portrayed that the African American man of that era has a choice - either be a church-going, loyal and submissive type, or a jaded, violent, hardened criminal type. There is no chance for anything in between. Yet, Bigger tries. He is constantly trying. Unfortunately, he is haunted by a paranoid hatred of white people. His fear that they are always out to "get him" gets him in touble time and time again. He is constantly thinking the worst of everyone around him and that causes him to make terrible decisions. There is rape, murder and the death penalty in this book. ( )

"Lawd today!", "Uncle Tom's children", "Native son"