Episode 32: Native Son

We can’t believe that we occasionally get to read books by real-deal leftists on this podcast, given the time we spend dunking on politically terrible novels, but Richard Wright is truly a fellow traveller. We discuss his 1940 novel Native Son, which is the story of a young Black man in Chicago and also the story of every diabolical and white supremacist institution of capital. So a lot of fun.

We discuss the questions of determinism and naturalism, the form and possibilities of form in politically-oriented novels, and the questions of how Wright directs his critique. Wright’s own essay “How Bigger was Born,” included in most editions of Native Son, also informs our conversation and helps us to reflect on how Wright wanted to write a book that “would be so hard and deep that [readers] would have to face it without the consolation of tears.”

We read the Harper Perennial edition. We recommend Bill Mullen’s Popular Fronts, which discusses Black literary culture in Chicago in the 1930s and '40s. Michael Denning’s The Cultural Front, about left literary and cultural production in the US in the '30s and '40s, is always worth revisiting.

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