Native Son
Native Son by Richard Wright is a story about a young Black man named Bigger Thomas who lives in Chicago’s Southside circa the 1930s. The protagonist makes a number of awful decisions, including accidentally killing a white woman in a moment of panic.
This book isn’t explicitly about environmental issues, but there are some intersections in the city’s history. That decade saw the redlining of the city, which pushed Black residents into horrible conditions that include bad housing, crime, and vermin, like the huge black rat that Bigger kills with a skillet in his kitchen. Bigger’s life was always going to be difficult, regardless of the choices he’d make: The toxicity around him and in his decisions mirrors the toxicity of his environment. Almost a century later, Chicago’s south neighborhoods are still largely segregated and suffer from disproportionate levels of pollution and the illnesses, like asthma, that go along with it.
This book was banned from Irvington High School in Fremont, California back in 1998. Some parents complained that the novel was too graphic for children, though children across America face similar horrors in their real lives.
