THE NATIVE SONS OF NIGERIA

THE NATIVE SONS OF NIGERIA The West African Examination Council, WAEC recently changed its literature syllabus. Among the newly introduced texts for African and non African prose are two important and interesting novels. Faceless is an African prose written by Amah Darko a Ghanaian author while Native Son is a non African prose written by Richard Wright an African American author. However, both books deal with serious social issues which inspire this article. While Faceless deals with vices ranging from broken home, sexual abuses, thuggery, street life and child labour among several others, Native Son deals with issues that are psychologically far worse than those aforementioned. Native Son is the tragic story of Bigger Thomas, a poor, uneducated, twenty year old black man in 1930s Chicago, wakes up one morning in his family’s cramped apartment on the South Side of the city. Having grown up under the climate of harsh racial prejudice in 1930s America, Bigger is burdened with...