Estou certo de que a maioria dos leitores que se sentem compelidos a expressar as impressões e sensações que a leitura de determinadas obras provocam na sua pessoa (seja através de uma opinião publicada on-line ou por meio de estimulante discussões) depararam-se a certa altura com um trabalho literário que lhes pareceu de tal modo brilhante, pertinente e importante que quase lhes silencia a voz. Uma obra que, por lhes ter parecido de tal modo imensa, tanto em termos artísticos como intelectuais, lhes faz sentir como se tudo o que pudessem escrever sobre esta não lhe faria de modo algum justiça. “Native Son” teve este efeito na minha pessoa. No entanto, não me vou coibir de escrever uma opinião sobre esta obra, cuja genialidade tanto me intimida, por ter a esperança de que de algum modo, ainda que apenas tenuemente, possa contribuir para que um leitor curioso a venha um dia a ler. “Native Son” , romance de Richard Wright, autor afro-americano nascido a 1908 numa plantação em Mississipi, é uma obra literária de inigualável coragem e pureza artística. Foi publicada em 1940, época em que a segregação racial era uma ainda uma brutal realidade num país que proclamava constantemente a igualdade de direitos de todos os cidadãos americanos. Esta segregação estendia-se a todos os aspetos da vida em sociedade, exceto onde o ditasse o homem branco – transportes públicos, cinemas, cafés, restaurantes, salas de aula, áreas residenciais - em resumo, em todas as áreas da vida civilizacional. Determinadas oportunidades de emprego e salários eram de um modo geral vedados á população negra a quem eram cobradas elevadas rendas por espaços diminutos, apesar do emprego precário que lhes era possível adquirir. Tudo isso era justificado pela população branca com o facto de supostamente a raça negra ser-lhes inferior. Como é óbvio, as possibilidades de um afro-americano atingir sucesso académico e profissional para eram extremamente parcas, quanto mais a de adquirirem sentimentos de realização pessoal e autoestima. Viviam sob o medo constante de represálias e dos corpos policiais pois estavam bem cientes de que os direitos que tinham não eram os mesmos do que os dos brancos, independentemente do que estivesse escrito na Constituição Americana. Eram por isso forçados a adotar em relação aos brancos uma constante atitude servil e temerosa. Como é óbvio, viver numa sociedade que lhes tratava como seres inferiores e que procurava ativamente limitar as suas oportunidades académicas e, consequentemente, laborais não podia deixar de exercer uma enorme pressão nos negros. O afro-americano era um povo que tinha perfeita consciência da injustiça e opressão a que eram sujeitos, mas sem líderes políticos para os guiar, encontravam-se a acumular uma raiva e angustia que, na impossibilidade de dirigi-la para os seus opressores, acabavam frequentemente por despeja-la sobre si próprio ou outros membros da sua raça. A personagem principal deste romance, de nome Bigger Thomas, é um afro-americano que crescera no chamado “Black Belt”, essencialmente um ghetto para negros que se encontrava afastado das áreas residenciais dos brancos e que, devido á constante segregação e limitações impostas pela sociedade onde vive, nutre um considerável desprezo pelos seus conterrâneos negros e a religião pelo servilismo e resignação que adotam e incentivam, uma crescente angústia pelo medo e postura servil que instintivamente é forçado a adotar perante o “mundo dos brancos” e acima de tudo, um profundo ódio em relação aos brancos. Incapaz de se resignar às limitações que lhe são impostas pela sociedade em que vive, recusa-se a compactuar com estas e sonha um dia libertar-se. Encontra-se alienado dos brancos, do seu povo e até de si mesmo. Sendo um individuo de temperamento volátil e tendo-lhe sido negado o benefício de uma boa educação por ter de ter ido trabalhar cedo de modo a ajudar a suportar a mãe e os irmãos mais novos, a raiva e frustração que sente encontra expressão através de atos violentos e crimes. È precisamente por este motivo que julgo este romance ser um enorme acto de coragem da parte do seu autor. A sua personagem principal, Bigger, está bem longe de ser um santo. Trata-se de um individuo agressivo, violento, criminoso, algo ignorante e calculista que vem, no decorrer do romance, a agir de um modo progressivamente mais indefensável. Comete dois homicídios – o primeiro de um modo não premeditado num momento de pânico e o segundo derivado do medo de ser capturado mas cometido premeditadamente. Wright evidencia claramente que considera os crimes da personagem do romance indefensáveis e injustificáveis, que este deve ser punido por estes mas salienta sempre que Bigger é acima de tudo, um produto do seu meio – um meio que lhe negou desde o seu nascimento a educação, estabilidade e oportunidades profissionais necessárias lhe permitissem vir a tornar-se num membro funcional de uma sociedade igualitária. Parece ser este acima de tudo esta a mensagem do romance – a abjeta segregação e opressão de que eram vítimas os negros nos Estados Unidos criava novos “Bigger Thomases” todos os dias que, ao se sentirem como seres humanos de qualidade inferior tratados como animais alimentavam dentro de si mesmos uma raiva de tal modo intensa que estavam fadados a estarem quase para além da redenção a partir de certa altura, o que não poderia deixar de trazer trágicos resultados tanto para a comunidade negra como branca. Wright pretendia alertar que, se continuasse a ser negada a igualdade aos Negros e fomentada a segregação um dia o povo afro-americano se revoltaria – de um modo violento ou pacifico dependeria do líder que abraçasse a causa destes seres humanos segregados. Quis a história que este líder viesse a ser um homem tão magnífico e fabuloso como Martin Luther King que, através da sua desobediência civil pacifica possibilitou a dissolução de muitas das barreiras que existiam entre negros e brancos. “Native Son” não é, portanto, o “Á Procura da felicidade” dos anos 40. É um livro frio, duro, cru e que apresenta uma recusa inabalável em se comprometer, seja em que aspeto for. Wright foi, como seria de esperar, alvo de acesas criticas devido a “Native Son”, tanto de críticos brancos como negros. Acusado de agitador e provocador pela fação branca ao ponto de ser vigiado pelo FBI e CIA, também recebeu fortes críticas de certos membros da comunidade negra, que censuravam o facto de Wright ter dedicado um romance a uma personagem que parecia encapsular em si as piores qualidades do povo afro-americano. Wright defendeu-se deste tipo de críticas da parte de certos indivíduos da comunidade negra afirmando que queria criar uma obra que salientasse os negativos e perversos efeitos da segregação de um modo cru e realista que recusasse ao leitor o “consolo das lágrimas”. Não queria escrever um romance sobre a perseverança ou o sucesso que apenas uma pouca quantidade de Negros chegava a ter a oportunidade de vir a alcançar e que criasse a ilusão de que qualquer individuo nas mesmas condições, se fosse trabalhador e honesto, poderia alcançar – um romance que apaziguaria a consciência da população branca. Não, queria criar uma obra que se assemelhasse ao soar de um alarme ou sirene policial – algo que forçasse a América a ponderar sobre o facto de que, ao tratarem uma parte da sua população como animais, estavam a criar condições extremamente voláteis cujas consequências não beneficiariam ninguém; que a segregação deveria cessar imediatamente de um modo pacífico antes que a raiva e angústia de comunidades inteiras atingisse finalmente o seu ponto de ebulição e explodisse violentamente. Simultaneamente profundamente naturalista e existencialista, com uma excelente mensagem que é transmitida de um modo claro mas sem nunca perder de vista o facto de se tratar de um romance, esta estimulante e genial obra de Wright foi uma das melhores obras literárias que já tive o prazer de ler na minha vida. *Esta excelente edição da obra da Harper Perennial inclui ainda “How Bigger Was Born”, uma reflexão do autor sobre “Native Son” e a personagem principal do romance, assim como uma elucidativa cronologia da vida de Richard Wright. *
Have you heard the name Trayvon Martin? If you have, good. If you haven’t, look him up. Open a tab, search up the name, T-R-A-Y-V-O-N etc, and read. Familiarize yourself with the exact definitions of the atrocity, the scope of the repercussions throughout the US, the up and currently running process of rectification that in a fair and just world would not be as excruciatingly slow and painful as it’s turning out to be. In a fair and just world, he would not be one of countless mown down for everything but a valid reason.This is not a fair and just world.No, this is a world where we have those who profess to be not only good writers deserving of literary rewards, but good teachers of writing to boot, despite bigoting their scope of literature down to the basic principle of whom they identify with based on parameters such as gender, sexuality, and color of skin.Do you know what that sort of mentality would leave me, reading this book? Do you know which character I was expected to perfectly align with, the one most feasible for the goal of sewing myself up in the skin and riding around in perfect harmony? The young white girl, so filled with highflown aspirations of social justice, so loaded with easy income, so filthy with white privilege, who is suffocated and mutilated and burned up into a few fragments of bone and a single earring.Tell me, then, oh wise teacher, keeper of books and innate sense of good literature, white, middle-aged, heterosexual, the banality of character, the default of personalization, the one archetype for whom nearly the whole of literature has been customized for and has never known what it means to eke out an empathetic terrain on the basis of understanding, not physicality. Even here, in this book written by a black man, you have an overwhelming majority in terms of representation, what with your Buckley, your Max, your multitudes of Klu Klux Klan and crowds and judges all in a big fat white male world. While I have a single soul, a Mary Dalton. What the fuck am I supposed to do with her, this small, pretty, idiot girl who knows nothing of the agony she is sustained by, and thinks herself kind and generous by reaching out to those her very skin tone persecutes and compromising their existence with a single moment of stupidly inane trust? What am I supposed to do with this pompously fulfilled imbecile, this suicidally naïve prat who innocently frames her words out of what she perceives as an intention of kindness, treating the other as an animal when she notices their plight and accessory ensuring her comfortable existence when she returns to her natural state of self-righteous ignorance?For you know, teacher, in spite of all that deficiencies on her part, there is a case to be made when it comes to the casual abuse and even more casual conformation of mind and soul of countless women in the history of both reality and literature. Saintly virgin, blighted whore, girlfriend in a refrigerator, all objects used with unconscious persistence of augmenting the male reality, the male realization, the male point of view. You may not know, teacher, with your blatant refusal to even consider reading literature on the other side of the curtain of your all too male sensibilities, but that is not how woman are. That is not how I am, and as such it would be all too easy to resonate with Bessie and Mary above all others, young women there and gone in a swift spending of their use in the pursuit of a story of a young and violent man.Tell me, in light of that, should I hate Bigger Thomas? Should I spit on him and his indomitable pride of living, one that will not be blinded to the misery of him and his people no matter how much they beg and plead? Should I ignore his anger, his shame, his fearful panic in the face of living cut and dried at every second, every year, every century that his ancestors were first wrenched away from their homeland and have suffered in inhuman bondage ever since? Should I withhold my empathy for someone who looks the reality of his existence in the face, dregging out his life in a country that rapes him into a corner and sees that as the way it ought to be? Should I refuse to recognize the effects of a neverending amputation of the self’s expression onto the wider plane of life and living, the horrible consequences that can and will result so long as oppression stamps its broken and bloody way across ethics and humanity?Should I close my ears to the integrity of Max, the manipulation of Buckley, not chase the slightest bit of critical analysis of the two and their diatribes, all because I cannot relate in terms of simple physicality? Above all, should I have not even embarked on this book written by Richard Wright, because somehow I ‘knew’ that I wouldn’t relate because of the differences the author and I have in terms of skin and gender? Tell me, teacher, although it’s unlikely you would ever deserve the title no matter how much writing you did. Would you have me stuff myself into a box that will cradle me with familiar blindness forevermore? Would you have me tie myself down to the identity of someone like poor Mary Dalton, the little fool, and rightfully suffer for it? For I will never know what it means on a visceral level to be black, male, and in the United States, pushed past the farthest boundaries of humanity by centuries of systematic oppression of an entire people into a barren void where right and wrong squeak along with the voices of ghosts. But I do know how to read, as well as listen. I do know how to write, as well as think. I do know, in the fundamental ache of my self, what it means to be a human being. Do you know that last one, teacher? I doubt it.
What do You think about Native Son (2005)?
So am I the only one picking up on the strong existentialist bent here? I know it's The Outsider (which I have yet to read) that's usually pegged as Wright's existentialist novel, but let's not forget this. I mean, Camus fans should pick up on a few similarities between this and The Stranger immediately. Meursault and Bigger both feel distanced and disillusioned from those around them, both participate in an empty relationship for nothing but the sex, both commit a murder and form their own self-definitions around the murder, and are both placed on trial for it. The difference is that the motivations for Bigger's crimes are explored in more depth than Meursault's; after all, the absurdist underpinnings of the stranger pretty much mean that Meursault HAS no motives.Now, consider that this came out two years before the Stranger.I'm not gonna turn this into prattling about literary theory, because I recognize a lot of people probably don't care about that sort of thing. Still, if Camus had picked up on Wright, that makes the guy's influence a lot larger and more widespread than has previously been discussed. I mean, this is just as provocative as the Stranger in its own way; maybe more so, as it deals with the VERY concrete issue of racial self-definition. Wright makes no efforts to excuse Bigger's murder, but he does plenty to explain it - he saw it as the only way of asserting his individuality and power over the oppressive society he lived in. Not exactly beach reading, but it provides harsh and insightful answers to important questions, not just about racism but really oppression and self-definition in general. After all, few things are more compelling than reading the work of an angry person who is able to articulate precisely why he is angry. Of course, there's also a lot of great storytelling here. Wright packs his novel with suspense, gripping action, fiery speeches, and a psychological depth of field to rival Dostoevsky. So you're not just reading it for the provocative questions about oppression and power relations; you're reading it for the rooftop chases, for the build-ups to robberies that end up taking a completely different directions, for an understanding of the mentality of a man pushed towards murder, for the oratorical wonder of a speech delivered at Bigger's trial. That's another thing Wright and Camus have in common, and for that matter an ability pretty much all of the great authors share: they have the ability to combine intellectualism with human drama, which makes their narratives doubly compelling.So whether you view it as a key text of existentialism (and why is Ellison the only black novelist allowed to join the existentialist club, anyway? Let's give Wright the credit he deserves here) or as a fantastic story of crime and punishment, Native Son delivers on pretty much every imaginable front.
—Sentimental Surrealist
I was always afraid to read this book because of the inevitable murder. I would get to the point of the pillow in Bigger's hands, then stop. But I'm so glad I read it. It was really relentless throughout. Really, my heart was racing. It was as brutal as I imagined, but it was a good brutality. Ahem.I read Black Boy over and over and over again. I love Wright's writing. My only complaint about the book was the over-explanation offered the readers with Bigger's lawyer Max. It reminded me of the over-explanation at the end of the movie Psycho, but I forgave it as I did Psycho: I contextualized it. In terms of Psycho, how many people really understood a psychopath in 1960? In terms of Native Son, how many people really understood the product of oppression. You know, we still don't understand it now!Sorry if this review is discombobulated. Just got done teaching my first class of the semester and have left-over jitters.
—Demisty Bellinger
My first thought was that we haven't come very far in 75 years. I'm not saying we haven't made any progress as a society, but you could probably take the entire plot of Native Son and set it in the current era and not really have to change a thing. So many people still feel disillusioned and isolated in the same ways that Bigger expressed throughout the story. I don't intend to get into any kind of sociological debate here, but we have to do better - ALL of us have to do better. The other thought that struck me significantly is the importance of fathers. Bigger's father is never mentioned. He has no involvement with his family - we don't even know why he's absent. Let me detour to my "real world" experience as a psychological examiner for just a minute. I thought back through a lot of my toughest cases as a child therapist and the majority of them had problems with their relationship with their fathers. These were boys and girls from a variety of socio-economic classes, both genders, black, white, Hispanic, Middle Eastern ... I could go on. For all of these kids their fathers were absent in some way and it created huge issues. Granted, Bigger has some frightening psychological traits that likely wouldn't have been alleviated by the presence of his father or a father-figure earlier in his life, but it's worth thinking about how things could have gone differently.Full review here: https://ennleesreadingcorner.wordpres...
—Nicole
