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 Wrigh