NATIVE SON by Richard Wright

Mon 1/1/24 {First Book of The New Year}

The story of Bigger Thomas who is a young black man in 30's America.

From the book's page at Wikipedia:

"...It tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, a black youth living in utter poverty in a poor area on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s.

While not apologizing for Bigger's crimes, Wright portrays a systemic causation behind them. Bigger's lawyer, Boris Max, makes the case that there is no escape from this destiny for his client or any other black American since they are the necessary product of the society that formed them and told them since birth who exactly they were supposed to be."

"The protagonist of the novel, Bigger, commits crimes and is put on trial for his life. He is convicted and sentenced to the electric chair. His acts give the novel action but the real plot involves Bigger's reactions to his environment and his crime. Through it all, Bigger struggles to discuss his feelings, but he can neither find the words to fully express himself nor does he have the time to say them. However, as they have been related through the narration, Bigger —typical of the "outsider" archetype — has finally discovered the only important and real thing: his life. Though too late, his realization that he is alive — and able to choose to befriend Mr. Max — creates some hope that men like him might be reached earlier.

Debatable as the final scene is, in which for the first time Bigger calls a white man by his first name, Bigger is never anything but a failed human. He represents a black man conscious of a system of racial oppression that leaves him no opportunity to exist but through crime. As he says to Gus, "They don't let us do nothing... [and] I can't get used to it." A line goes, one cannot exist by simply reacting: a man must be more than the sum total of his brutalizations. Bigger admits to wanting to be an aviator and later, to Max, aspire to other positions esteemed in the American Dream. But here he can do nothing . . . just be one of many blacks in what was called the "ghetto" and maybe get a job serving whites; crime seems preferable, rather than accidental or inevitable. Not surprisingly, then, he already has a criminal history, and he has even been to reform school. Ultimately, the snap decisions which the law calls "crimes" arose from assaults to his dignity, and being trapped like the rat he killed with a pan, living a life where others held the skillet."

What I noticed is that not much has changed for poor black men except there is absolutely NO gang activity in 1930's America. That's about the only difference.