Books like Native Son

Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.

Liked Native Son by Richard Wright? Here's what readers who loved it picked up next.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952) · 3.84★
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin (1953) · 4★
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X (1965) · 4.29★
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937) · 3.87★
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977) · 4.01★
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906) · 3.72★
Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987) · 3.77★
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939) · 3.92★
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929) · 3.86★
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958) · 3.61★
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946) · 4.08★
The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982) · 4.17★