Classics · TenseBigger Thomas, 20, lives with his family in one Chicago room and takes a job with a wealthy white family
Native Son
A young man from a Chicago single-room apartment gets a job with a wealthy white family
Bigger Thomas is 20 and Black, and he lives in poverty with his mother, his sister and his brother in a single room on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s. He is looking for work and falls into a job with a wealthy white family, which exposes him to a world far beyond his own. The novel has three parts, the third titled "Fate." Harper & Brothers published it in 1940. The Book-of-the-Month Club selected it, and it sold 250,000 hardcover copies within three weeks.
More about this book
Who
Bigger Thomas, a 20-year-old Black man.
World
Chicago's South Side in the 1930s.
What makes it different
The Book-of-the-Month Club's edits shaped the original text, and the Library of America published a restored version in 1991.
Feel
Urgent and unsparing.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- Native SonWikipedia