Author.  His powerful,  eloquent work examined the injustices African-Americans face in a white society.  He won immediate fame for his first novel,  “Native Son” (1940).  It tells the story of Bigger Thomas,  a young chauffeur whose inarticulate rage over his lot ultimately erupts into violence.  “Native Son” was adapted into a play directed by Orson Welles in 1941,  filmed in 1951 with Wright himself playing Bigger,  and again in 1986.  Wright’s other books include “Black Boy” (1945),  an autobiography;  the novels “The Outsider” (1953) and “The Long Dream” (1958);  the story collections “Uncle Tom’s Children” (1938) and “Eight Men” (1961);  and the philosophical volumes “Black Power” (1954) and “White Man,  Listen!” (1957).  Richard Nathaniel Wright was born near Natchez,  Mississippi.  Largely self-educated,  he began to write after moving to Chicago around 1927.  He was a member of the Communist Party from 1932 to 1944;  he later wrote of his disillusionment with that system in “The God That Failed” (1949),  a collection of essays by former party members.  Wright lived in Paris from 1946 until his death.  A second book of memoirs,  “American Hunger,”  was published posthumously in 1977. (bio by: Bobb Edwards)  Family links:  Parents:  Ella Wilson Wright