The McKinnon Review of Books

Native Son by Richard Wright

Shane Papatolicas (staff review)

The first time I ever remember feeling bad for someone who did something horrible was in Ms McGlynn’s Year 11 English class. His name was Bigger Thomas, and he was an African-American teenager who murdered a young, wealthy white girl in Chicago. Bigger, of course, was the fictional protagonist of Richard Wright’s 1940 novel Native Son, but there was nothing fictional about what he had begun to teach me about race in America.

You see, I had grown up in New Hampshire, a predominantly white state north of Boston, and racial inequality was never at the forefront of my consciousness. It was a unit we covered during Black History Month (February), or a song we heard by Public Enemy. When I encountered Bigger, I began to realise that racism was not only something that still existed, but something of which I was a part.

Written in 1940, Native Son takes us into the depths of systemic racism, oppression, poverty and fear. It is a novel about the limited choices available to minorities, and the consequences that come with them. Wright’s brilliance lies in his ability to build empathy for Bigger, as we are able to see how the oppressive system led him down the criminal path. Wright’s narrator articulates,“Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed...It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.”

From slavery to Black Lives Matter, African-Americans continue to fight for this individuality, and America continues to resist granting it to them. What Richard Wright wrote about in 1940 is all too relevant today, and we can all learn something about our part in this struggle by reading Native Son.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Julia Khorouji (Student Review)

Hands down the greatest book series. Riggs successfully manages to progress original characters and keep tabs on them throughout all six books whilst introducing new ones, and cleverly describes the setting in such a way that the reader can mould it into something familiar to them. The series is not repetitive, unlike the Hunger Games, and after a few pages you already feel as though you know the characters on a deep and personal level. Riggs also plays around with tension and foreshadowing throughout the stories, increasing the dramatic effect on the reader. He does a very good job of splitting the text into multiple story lines and successfully blends them back together once relevant--something which a lot of authors neglect. This is the series that got me deeply interested in literature, so deep that not even the not-so-great Gatsby wavered me. This should be our novel for year 8 English, not the Hunger Games. 9.4/10