Reviews tagging 'Sexism'

Native Son by Richard Wright

4 reviews

dustghosts's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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nonfictionfeminist's review

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challenging dark emotional informative sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

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michaelion's review

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challenging dark informative tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75

Dear StoryGraph, I implore you, please add a trigger tag specifically for misogynoir, because it's disgusting how much of it is in this book.
The choice to open the book with Bigger killing a rat, then terrorizing his sister to the point where she faints and he laughs about it is mild foreshadowing of what's to come. Also, unrelated to the opening scene, there's something poetic about everything black men fear about being caught doing with a white woman, they do to Black women. Justice4Bessie!


If you're planning on reading this, brace yourself. In my edition, there was an excerpt where Wright tells the readers of a book club that the first draft of this book was 576 pages. Which actually makes me like this book less, because it could've easily been 200 pages shorter and been a tighter, sharper, better story. It was a drag to get through reading. In the third section of the book alone, one character monologues for 23 pages with no breaks. After a certain point you simply have to start skimming. But, I promise, you're not missing much.

I gave this rating an extra .25 for Jan and Max. It sucks that the characters I like most were the not-like-the-others whites!
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hawkrose18's review

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

CAWPILE: 4.71

So I am pretty sure that I am not supposed to like the main character, but I really didn't like Bigger. I really didn't like how he was justifying his horrid actions to himself, and I understand why it was that way, but I just didn't like it. I know that Bigger was an uneducated Black man in the 1930s so his actions and thoughts made sense, but Bigger just got on my nerves so much and I don't know if that was the intention or not. I did like some of the lines in here and the commentary was pretty decent in my opinion, but I just was kind of grossed out by the thoughts and actions that Bigger had about/towards women because most of them were unnecessary in my opinion. I'm not an own voices reviewer and I did have to read this book for school so take that into account when reading this review. I don't think that this book is necessarily meant for me, but in the long run I am glad that I did read it, I just wish I liked it as much as I was expecting myself to like it.
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