Native Son - Literary Significance and Criticism

Literary Significance and Criticism

Wright's protest novel was an immediate best-seller, selling 250,000 hardcover copies within three weeks of its publication by the Book-of-the-Month Club on March 1, 1940. It was one of the earliest successful attempts to explain the racial divide in America in terms of the social conditions imposed on African-Americans by the dominant white society. It also made Wright the wealthiest black writer of his time and established him as a spokesperson for African-American issues, and the "father of Black American literature." As Irving Howe said in his 1963 essay "Black Boys and Native Sons," "The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever. No matter how much qualifying the book might later need, it made impossible a repetition of the old lies . . . brought out into the open, as no one ever had before, the hatred, fear, and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our culture."

However, the book was criticized by some of Wright's fellow African-American writers. James Baldwin's 1948 essay Everybody's Protest Novel dismissed Native Son as protest fiction, and therefore limited in its understanding of human character and its artistic value. The essay was collected with nine others in Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son (1955).

In 1991 the novel was for the first time published in its entirety by the Library of America, together with an introduction, a chronology and notes by Arnold Rampersad, a well-regarded scholar of African-American literary works. This edition also contains Richard Wright's 1940 essay How 'Bigger' Was Born.

Native Son by Richard Wright has endured a series of challenges in public high schools and libraries all over the United States. Many of these challenges focus on the book being “sexually graphic," "unnecessarily violent," and "profane.” Some of the challengers even go as far as stating that the book “glorifies criminal activity.” Despite complaints from parents, many schools have successfully fought to keep Wright's work in the classroom. Some teachers believe the themes in Native Son and other challenged books "foster dialogue and discussion in the classroom" and "guide students into the reality of the complex adult and social world." Native Son is number 27 on Radcliffe’s Rival 100 Best Novels List.

The book is number 71 on the American Library Association's list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000. The Modern Library placed it number 20 on its list of the 100 best novels of the 20th Century. Time Magazine also included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.