Native Son.

WRIGHT, Richard (Toni Morrison).

Item Number: 89942

New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1940.

First edition, first issue binding with “A – P” on the copyright page. First issue green and yellow jacket, with price of $2.50 present and no blurbs on the spine. Octavo, original blue cloth, titles to upper board and spine in red and gray. Boldly signed by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison on the front free endpaper. In 1977, Toni Morisson’s third novel Song of Solomon became the first novel by an African American writer to be chosen as a main selection for the Book of the Month Club since Wright’s Native Son in 1940. Both award-winning authors’ works boldly addressed the issues of racism and race relations prevalent in late 19th to mid-20th century America through powerful and vivid portrayals of the African American experience. Wright is credited for helping to change race relations through his literary work, and Morrison received both the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 and National Humanities Medal in 2000. Fine in a very good first issue dust jacket which has been laminated. A strong association linking two of the most influential figures in the African American literary canon.

Richard Wright's ground-breaking novel Native Son tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African American living in utter poverty in Chicago's South Side ghetto in the 1930s. "The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever. It made impossible a repetition of the old lies [and] brought out into the open, as no one ever had before, the hatred, fear and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our culture" (Irving Howe).