Wright's debut and most famous novel, Native Son (1940), tells the tale of Bigger Thomas, a young African American who inadvertently commits a murder and faces the death penalty.

White Man, Listen! (1957) is a compilation of Wright's more prominent essays.

James Baldwin's novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), explores the life of an African American family living in Harlem during the Great Depression. Baldwin, similar to Wright, was an expatriate residing in France, and the two authors shared a turbulent friendship.

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) quickly became a classic for its vivid depiction of racial discrimination in 1950s America, as portrayed by the story's narrator, an unnamed young black man.