I found this challenging in the best ways - not because there were big words, not because Wright engineered in literary devices that I felt like I needed to hunt for and decode-- but because it was deep and layered and nuanced, not always consistent, sometimes hard to fathom, all while ringing true to me about how Bigger Thomas might have been, or rather how it might have been to have been Bigger Thomas.

It would have been too cliched for Wright to say "alienation", so he shows it instead. It's hard to do, to paint a picture of the big, deep, invisible structures that shackle us, but he does it pretty well.

I am still gobsmacked when white folks downplay America's history (and present) of racism. If they could get into this book, and into Bigger Thomas's and the other black characters' skins, they might gain new perspective. Of course, I fear that those most in need of doing so would be least open to that experience. In the meantime, every white person can probably benefit from a little bit of the Bigger's-eye view of life. I think I did.

I have a few lines from Mr. Max's presentation that sort of get at the "structural" themes, but it's a testimony to Wright's integrity that he doesn't try to make it easy by putting a summary cherry on top. Like the structures of oppression themselves, this has to be spread out, capillary. This makes it harder to see, but is truer to its nature.

"I plead with you to see a mode of life in our midst, a mode of life stunted and distorted, but possessing its own laws and claims, an existence of men growing out of the soil prepared by the collective but blind will of a hundred million people" (p. 388).

"powerless pawns in a blind play of social forces" (p. 390).

Anyway, very good stuff.