James Baldwin and "Sonny's Blues"

African-American James Baldwin (1924-1987) was born in Harlem in New York City, the son of a Pentecostal minister (Kennedy and Gioia 53). Much of Baldwin's work, which includes three novels and numerous short stories and essays, describes conflicts, dilemmas, obstacles, and choices faced by African-Americans in modern-day white-dominated society, and ways, good and bad, that African-Americans either surmount or fall victim to racial prejudices, stereotypes, temptations and inner conflicts. Baldwin's best-known work, the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain (1957) describes a single day in the lives of several members of a church in Harlem (Kennedy and Gioia). James Baldwin is also the author of two other novels, Giovanni's Room (1956) and Another Country (1962), both of which deal with homosexual experience, and a collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son (1955) (Kennedy and Gioia).

In the short story "Sonny's Blues (1957), Baldwin's...
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