He has nowhere to go. So he goes there. The narrator of The Society of Others is an alienated young man who sees no meaning in life. He doesn't even see the point of getting out of bed in the morning. To get his family off his back, he embarks on an aimless hitchhiking adventure around Europe. But his journey soon turns into an orgy of violence...

Cross Damon is a man at odds with society and with himself-a man of superior intellect who hungers for peace but who brings terror and destruction wherever he goes. From Richard Wright, one of the most powerful, acclaimed, and essential American authors of the twentieth century, comes a compelling story of a black man's attempt to escape his past and start anew in Harlem. The Outsider is an important work of fiction that depicts American racism and...

"Which should prevail: loyalty to family or loyalty to the truth? Is telling the truth ever a mistake and is lying for one's family ever justified? Can one do the right thing, but bitterly regret it? ... My Life as a Rat follows Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age twelve, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African-American boy by her older brothers....