native son

¹

noun

1. a person born in a particular place:

   The delegation from Iowa nominated a native son.

Native Son

²

noun

1. a novel (1940) by Richard Wright.

Native Son

1. (1940) A novel by African-American author Richard Wright about a young black man whose life is destroyed by poverty and racism .

Word History and Origins

Origin of native son¹

An Americanism dating back to 1825–35

Example Sentences

But there is something else to Oshu’s love for its native son.

From Los Angeles Times

Though the stadium in Hermosillo, the Sonora state capital, has long been named after Fernando Valenzuela, here in Etchohuaquila — population maybe 500 — there is no public monument to the native son, now more than four decades after the heady summer of Fernandomania.

From Los Angeles Times

Angeli-Chansley was a true native son of the district, he told me, though its exact confines have changed somewhat during his near four decades of life because of redistricting.

From Slate

With the help of his mother, Ms. Freddie Mae Wiley, L.A.’s native son is on the search for a radical freedom divorced from fixed Western notions of race, gender and class.

From Los Angeles Times

As James Baldwin wrote in “Notes of a Native Son”: “Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle.”

From Seattle Times