A review by brannonkrkhuang
The Outsider by Richard Wright

5.0

I really love Richard Wright. I just read Black Boy/American Hunger and Native Son recently. Now onto this. This book felt a lot like Native Son. A lot of similar things take place to push the story forward, and the communists come back into play. This one feels like it was written when Wright was having issues with the party in his real life. The book is a clear condemnation of the power-hungry paranoia and toxicity of the communist party that was taking place at the time. Hopefully things have gotten better in today's communist party. This book also had some other creepy things in it at the start, like our main character having a relationship with a girl who was underage. It was a hard book to read for reasons like that, but I liked his portrayal of the problems within the communist party, and feel that he wrote this with the hopes that the party would get better. I love when Wright digs into the thought process of his characters, and when they have those intense conversations at the end of the book. That's the good stuff.