Richard Wright's novels, autobiographies, essays, dramatic scripts, poetry, and other nonfiction draw on the poverty and segregation of his childhood in the South and early adulthood in Chicago. A politically oriented writer, Wright focuses clearly and forcefully on the brutal and dehumanizing effects of racism on the black person. His first published work, Uncle Tom's Children, is a collection of novellas dealing with confrontations of blacks and whites, emphasizing the dignity of man and the oppression of a black underclass. His first novel, Lawd Today, was not published until after his death. In a bold, naturalistic style it centers around the life of Jake Jackson, a violent, untutored man from Chicago whose mean environment offers little opportunity and little hope.

Of more interest to the young adult is Wright's powerful protest novel, Native Son, which introduces us to Bigger Thomas, a poor, young, black man of twenty years who accidentally murders a rich, young, white woman. A prominent theme in this book is that blacks become criminals because of their environment. Bigger's crime, though, has two effects on him—that of giving him an identity and that of consuming him with fear and guilt so that he rapidly brings about his own destruction....