INJUSTICE

by Richard Wright

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

How to go on in a world where everything is set against you? With hope? In fear? Or, in violent struggle? In this gripping and disturbing book, Richard Wright weaves his own childhood recollections with those of Bigger Thomas - a young black man trapped in a life of poverty in the slums of Chicago, and unwittingly involved in a wealthy woman's death - to paint a portrait of insurmountable oppression. Through the strange pride Bigger takes in his crime, Wright brings us to confront the systems of justice we blindly assume are always on our side.

Selected from the books Black Boy and Native Son by Richard Wright

Genres: Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

Published April 5, 2018

About the author

Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of powerful, sometimes controversial novels, short stories and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerned racial themes. His work helped redefine discussions of race relations in America in the mid-20th century.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Andrea Sacchi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book easy to read but extremely painful.
A necessary reading.

[Anda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful extension of the author's respective work entitled "Native Son". It dives deep into what it meant to live the life of a black individual in a world which did everything against the said minority. The fact that this work is still relevant to this day, is what should scare the fellow reader to take action.

[Zinnia Sheoran]

This Vintage mini has stories from two books – ‘Black Boy’ and ‘Native Son’. - Native Son, his first novel, is a story of 20 yo Bigger Thomas, an African American youth living in utter poverty in Chicago. This novel was Wright’s urgent call in 1940 to America to awaken from its self-induced slumber about the reality of race relations in US. The author brings out many themes through this novel: fate vs. free will, race & class, fear, religion, powerful vs. non-powerful and injustice. - Black Boy is his memoir that details his youth in the South and eventual move to Chicago where he established his writing career.

Native Son was published in 1940 when he was 32 years old. This novel became one of the fastest-selling novels in American literary history. He went on to write many other books, both fiction and non-fiction, but at the time of his death, at the young age of 52 in 1960, many of the obituary notices made reference to Wright as the author of just this one book, 'Native Son'.

If you have to read one by this author, consider reading ‘Native Son’.

[Dunya Al-bouzidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I wanted to understand these two sets of people who lived side by side and never touched, it seemed, except in violence."

"Half the time I feel like I'm on the outside of the world peeping in through a knot-hole in the fence."

"They were shot, hanged, maimed, lynched, and generally hounded until they were either dead or their spirits broken."

"There was no day for him now, and there was no night; there was but a long stretch of time, a long stretch of time that was very short; and then - the end. Toward no one in the world did he feel any fear now, for he knew that fear was useless; and toward no one in the world did he feel any hate now, for he knew that hate would not help him."

"They draw a line and say for you to stay on your side of the line. They don't care if there's no bread over on your side. They don't care if you die. And then they say things like that about you and when you try to come from behind your line they kill you."

"They don't even let you feel what you want to feel. They after you so hot and hard you can only feel what they doing to you. They kill you before you die."

"We should not pretend horror or surprise when thwarted life expresses itself in fear and hate and crime."

"If only ten or twenty Negroes had been put into slavery, we could call it Injustice, but there were hundreds of thousands of them throughout the country. If this state of affairs had lasted for two or three years, we could say that it was unjust; but it lasted for more than two hundred years. Injustice which lasts for three long centuries and which exists among millions of people over thousands of miles of territory, is injustice no longer; it is an accomplished fact of life...
Injustice blots out one form of life, but another grows up in its place with its own rights, needs, and aspirations. What is happening here today is not injustice, but oppression, an attempt to throttle or stamp out a new form of life."

"But on both sides men want to live; men are fighting for life. Who will win? Well, the side that feels life most, the side with the most humanity."

[Wannia · Rating 5 out of 5]

i've read a bit about richard wright's life and legacy through various articles and such but this was my first time reading his actual words and i am stunned. his writing is painfully real and he depicts the flaws of human nature completely unflinchingly. it's incredible how the books these excerpts were taken from were written back in the 1940s, because to not only have this understanding of the intersectionality of race and class but be so brave to publish works like this at that time is admirable, to say the least.

i will definitely be picking up the full-length books used in this mini.

[Wichitacountry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A snapshot of Richard Wright's major works. Bigger's dire existence is a grim reminder of oppression and injustice which still hange over African Americans. The sense of suffocation is real when Bigger had to resort to violence to negate the societal denial of his existence, all too reminiscent of recalcitrant social issues that still plague black communities.

[Dulcie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Abigail Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting and thought provoking book. Love the idea of these vintage minis !

[Aish · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75⭐️

[Istiningdyah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wrap-Up review

[Parveen Harnam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A searing look into oppression vs injustice. As relevant today as it was then.