James Baldwin : Collected Essays : Notes of a Native Son / Nobody Knows My Name / The Fire Next Time / No Name in the Street / The Devil Finds Work / Other Essays (Library of America)

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Writer James Baldwin earnestly championed the civil rights movement in both his fiction and nonfiction, a fact which, coupled with his extraordinary writing talent, assured not only his historical importance, but also his place as one of the finest African American writers of his generation. Collected Essays is a comprehensive collection of his most memorable prose, including "Stranger in the Village," "The Harlem Ghetto," and "Many Thousands Gone." Clear in voice and vision, the essays communicate the emotions of an entire historical movement. Combining politics, prophecy, and passion, Baldwin's essays are truly as thought-provoking today as they were some 30 years ago.

Customer Reviews:

A must for the Serious Scholar's library.......2006-07-22

This collection of Baldwin's writings is priceless because not only is it a showcase of an agile and fertile mind, it also brings together in a single volume some of his most popular and more famous as well as some of his less formal writings and speeches.

Always well ahead of his times, Baldwin's essays remain fresh and as relevant in today's more quiescent racial times as they were during the more troubled times of his life. They remain fresh because they tell in Baldwin's own inimical and elegant way, the deeper truths about our troubled racial past and present. Most of all they reflect how Baldwin used his quick and restless mind to critique the social and artistic scenes of our troubled era: His strategy, reflected in this collection, was always to mine the substance from the subtext upwards. Those of us who try to mimic his techniques can learn a lot from this and the companion volume of his collected works.

At the same time, Baldwin's psychological analysis remains unerring and at least as sharp as, if not sharper than those of some of his French contemporaries, including his friends and compatriots in the struggle, Franz Fanon and Jean Paul Sartre, who also were both not only revolutionaries and revolutionary thinkers like Baldwin, but also a Psychiatrist and a Philosopher, respectively.

No library on the history of race in America or France is complete without this well designed and well-organized volume. Five stars.

Like Nothing Else You've Read.......2005-06-03

A lot of reviewers have talked about owning this book if you are distinctly interested in collecting works by black authors or in black studies. I think that this book is an essential element to anyone's library, in particular people interested in the craft of writing. Toni Morrison calls Baldwin the greatest essayist of the 20th century and I couldn't agree more.
In this collection of essays, it becomes clear that Baldwin has truly perfected the craft of the essay. Not only is Baldwin's content, his concepts of honesty and truth, of light and dark, right and wrong, of white and black, and much more straight up revolutionary, but he manages to have his content reflected in the craft and style of each essay, which should really be the goal of all writers.
More than anything, Baldwin has an exquisite ability to reveal a complex truth in a simple concise way. All of these essays, indeed all of Baldwin's works, have one common thread. And that is that TRUTH is found within contradiction, because contradiction is honest. I think anyone who browses this page should immediately try and at least check this out of their libary (though it's definitely worth owning, every time I reread it I discover new things) because it really will effect you in meaningful ways.

A great book -- A worthy part of a great series.......2004-02-23

I love James Baldwin--I think he's a tremendous writer, so Toni Morrison could hardly go wrong in selecting essays for this volume. All of the selections are excellent. Notes of a Native Son contains a touching eulogy for Richard Wright ("Alas, Poor Richard"), explaining the lonliness and problems Mr. Wright had at the end of his life. Baldwin displays his tremendous range as both a political commentator and a literary critic. The Devil Finds Work, in particular, is very insightful--and several parts humourous.

What I don't understand--and why I struck a star off this collection--is why Ms. Morrison did not include "Evidence of Things Unseen," Baldwin's analysis of the Atlanta child murders from the early eighties. Perhaps Library of America is planning later volumes of Baldwin's works--The companion volume to these essays is his "Early Novels," most notably "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and "Giovani's Room." I can't imagine that Library of America would not produce a volume including Mr. Baldwin's later works--especially "Just Above my Head."

This particular edition is well worth having--despite the price. First, this is a good collection of Baldwin's essays, many of which are difficult to find. Second, the Library of America really does a commendable job in paper quality and binding. This is not a leather bound edition on 50 pound paper, so stiff you can't open it and printed so the back binding looks impressive on your bookshelf--this is tightly bound, cardboard cover that lies flat, and is easy to read. The paper is not heavy--but acid free, and tear resistant. The Library of America series are good collections that are meant to be read many times, by many people--these books hold up very well.

I am afraid that Mr. Baldwin's works and opinions may fall by the wayside as time passes. The fact that Ms. Morrison--one of our best and most respected authors--put these collections together will certainly help keep Mr. Baldwin's works alive. But if you have any interest in what it means to be African American--in the twenties, to contemporary america--through even tomorrow--You need to read and appreciate Mr. Baldwin's insights. And you will also enjoy his clear, careful, and pointed writing.

review.......2002-05-10

This book was very interesting and i enjoyed the courage of a young black man to stand up for his rights.

A painful, powerful experience.......2001-10-11

In Egypt, I met an extraordinary American.
"I was born in New York, but have only lived in pockets of it. In Paris, I lived in all parts of the city - on the Right Bank and on the Left, among the bourgeoisie and among les miserables, and knew all kinds of people from pimps and prostitutes in Pigalle to Egyptian bankers in Nueilly. This may sound unprincipled or even obscurely immoral: I found it healthy. I love to talk to people, all kinds of people, and almost everyone, as I hope we still know, loves a man who loves to listen," he said.
"The perpetual dealing with people very different from myself caused a shattering in me of preconceptions I scarcely knew I held. This reassessment, which can be very painful, is also very valuable."
His name is Mr. Baldwin, and I cherish this new acquaintance because his ideas have had such profound impact on my views of Egypt. I wanted to know the people, but as I reach out for them, sometimes, I'm shocked by what I see. I see people sleeping on the concrete patios along the Nile - many of them have migrated from the farmlands because they can make more money for their families if they work in Cairo. But desert nights can be bitter cold in January, and it cuts my heart. Yet, Mr. Baldwin's message is well heeded. The same problems of inner city growth that come with development in Egypt also came with development in Britain one hundred years ago. American inner city schools and slums still reflect this challenge.
Would I have walked into the slums of Chicago if I were there? Would I have strolled through the southwest side of Kansas City or east St. Louis? Would I have walked into the anti-developing city blocks of L.A. if I were in America? Of course not. So why is it that traveling abroad opens my eyes to poverty in America? Why couldn't I see it when I was there? I don't know why this happens, but James Baldwin was right - absolutely right when he said that this reassessment, which can be very painful is also very valuable.
I have been told that the housing shortage in Egypt provided the impetus for many people to move into the spacious mausoleums in the old city graveyard. The international visitors call it, "The City of the Dead," and tourists go there and gawk at poverty creating a makeshift freak show out of human suffering. Then I learned that the housing shortage in Los Angeles provided the impetus for many people to move into mausoleums, but no one goes to gawk at them. In fact, there seems to be a kind of American denial that such things could ever happen in the land of milk and honey.
As I hear of people talking about human rights violations in Egypt, I think of the title of James Baldwin's book: Nobody Knows My Name. I think of James Byrd who was dragged to death behind a pickup truck. I think of the threats of millennium violence that frightened black American families so much that they bought guns and stayed home for the New Year. I think of the tiny city in Texas who voted Spanish as their city's official language and then received death threats from all over the nation. Of course, if you asked any American about human rights violations, they would tell you that this is something that happens in China or Africa. It's a painful realization that it might happen in MY country. Growing up in the American school system, I came to idolize Abraham Lincoln's courage and George Washington's integrity. The universal ideas of human value and dignity that we believe to be inalienable are not, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. so wisely told us, being applied universally in our country. These facts go against the ideals and values of our nation - they don't support the concepts of the free and the brave.
"It is a complex fate to be an American," Henry James observed. James Baldwin awakened me to that complexity in a way so subtle, so gentle and yet, so powerfully painful.
He awakened me to the hard realities of the American people, most of whom will never read or digest his work. They would dismiss him. But his vision is not to be dismissed. His writing illustrates that the responsibility of this future lies in the hands of blind people. People who refuse to see American neighborhoods and American people for what they really are. We can't improve until we accept the starting point. This lofty ideal of what we should be and blind obstinacy to what we are is killing us.
"Europe has what we do not have yet," Baldwin said. "A sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a new sense of life's possibilities."
Egypt has what we do not yet have - a clear and present sense of unity - an admiration for sacrifice for the whole of the group - the nuclear family, the extended family, the community. And we have absolutely nothing that Egypt needs, except, if you ask the younger generation: Nike shoes. In fact, this is precisely what Egyptians do not need. They do not need the destructive, greed-inspiring and greed-glorifying economic development of the West.

Book Description

Originally published in 1955, James Baldwin's first nonfiction book has become a classic. These searing essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and Americans abroad remain as powerful today as when they were written.

Customer Reviews:

Baldwin is brilliant.......2006-09-16

Baldwin's reasoning, deduction and ability to convey deeply personal thoughts with such command and authority are part of what make this book of essays so riveting.
In "Notes of a Native Son" I began to understand more about the author through his relationship, or lack of relationship, with his father. And in "Equal in Paris or Stranger in the Village," I was transported into a dimension of racial prejudice that I have never experienced through prose before. As powerful today as it was then. A must read.

Classic American essays.......2005-10-19

Originally published in 1955 these essays are now considered American classics. Baldwin writes with tremendous pain, humor, and insight into the situation of what was then , 'the Negro' in America. He writes with insight into the situation of the young writer striving to locate himself in relation to Western civilization as a whole-which he feels he can never wholly belong to as he strives to belong to it. He writes most powerfully about the day of the dying of his father, and the birth of his youngest sister. His description of his own family situation, and of his father's life is instructive of the whole history of insult and injury which had long been the lot of the black in America. His estrangement from his father, and yet understanding of the story of his father's suffering is one of the powerful sections of the book.
It seems to me this book also has an effect unintended and unforeseen by Baldwin. Reading it fifty years later one understands how far America has come in transforming itself in regard to the racial question. Much of the kind of discrimination Baldwin so eloquently describes in for instance his story of his first jobs, does not exist in the same way any more.
In this sense the book also has along with its literary value , value as a historical document.

Greatest American book of essays written in the twentieth century.......2005-10-06

Baldwin writes with a force and an eloquence that will take your breath away mastery--a powerful preacher on the page. What he has to say about the state of race relations in this country is still relevant today, almost half a century after this book was first published. I consider Baldwin our greatest twentieth-century African American writer and one of the greatest American writers ever. He is courageous, passionate, visionary, and a masterful writer.

brilliant, vivid, and incisive insights that shd be read.......2005-07-14

This is an absolutely wonderful book of essays about growing up, making a career, and being black in the US in the 1950-60s. Just the chapter on his step-father - an angry, brilliant, difficult man - is worth the price of admission. Beyond the black experience, everyone who has fought with a tough dad will empathise with Baldwin. Then there is a piece on living in France as a young writer, again it is unbelievably dense, funny, and moving, a true masterpiece of the genre of autobiographical essays. His style is so cool and clear, so icily brilliant, that any aspiring writer can study the style, as did I.

This book, in my opinion, has Baldwin's best work in it, of a quality that earns him a place in the literary canon. The essays really are far far better than any of his novels, in my opinion. While some of them are less than excellent journalistic pieces (A Fly in the Buttermilk about school integration), the best ones are, well, the best.

Warmly recommended.

Angry, humorous, reflective essays on being a black American.......2004-10-24

The ten essays in this collection were originally published in Commentary, Partisan Review, Harper's, and other national periodicals during the late 1940s and early 1950s; Baldwin revised a few essays, arranged them by theme, and added "Autobiographical Notes" as a preface. They are among the most compelling, insightful pieces ever written on what it means to be an American and, in particular, what means to be a black American. "The story of the Negro in America is the story of America," Baldwin writes, "or, more precisely, it is the story of Americans. It is not a pretty story: the story of a people is never very pretty."

"Everybody's Protest Novel" and "Many Thousands Gone" both discuss the portrayal of blacks in American fiction (beginning with "Uncle Tom's Cabin") and contain harsh criticism of Richard Wright's "Native Son"--comments which permanently ended their tempestuous friendship. Baldwin next directs his ire (and wit) at the ridiculous stereotypes in the all-black film "Carmen Jones." These are not mere reviews, however; the strength of these three essays is Baldwin's ability to offer general comments about societal matters based on a few examples. The second essay is particularly noteworthy because Baldwin writes as if he, like most of his readers, were white. This technique allow him to imply that, on the one hand, as a native-born American, he can easily comprehend the view of the "dominant" culture, yet, on the other hand, the black experience is something white Americans will never understand--that the majority assumption is "that the black man, to become truly human and acceptable, must first become like us."

The next three essays offer social commentary. "The Harlem Ghetto" describes life in Baldwin's neighborhood, examines the importance of the Negro press, and (undoubtedly with the readers of Commentary in mind) focuses especially on the ongoing tensions between Jews and blacks. In "Journey to Atlanta," Baldwin tells how his brother's church quartet was sent by the Progressive Party to Atlanta, ostensibly to sing at church events, but inevitably as free labor for canvassing activities--with no pay, poor lodging, and substandard food. In the end, the four young men were left to fend for themselves, struggling to earn money for their tickets back to New York. The final essay, "Notes of a Native Son," is a poignant eulogy for Baldwin's stepfather, including a hair-raising account of Baldwin's near-suicidal attempt to rebel again Jim Crow rules in New Jersey.

Baldwin's life in Europe takes up the last section. The first three essays describe the "social limbo" that greets Americans--white and black--in Paris and the "invisibility" of American blacks there; it includes the horrifying account of Baldwin's arrest and imprisonment for a hotel bedsheet stolen by an acquaintance. The final essay ends the collection on a humorous, sometimes touching, and ultimately contemplative note: what it's like to be not simply the only black man living in a Swiss resort but the only black man most of the villagers have ever seen. Baldwin realizes that "no road whatever will lead Americans back to the simplicity of this European village where white men still have the luxury of looking at me as a stranger."

What's astonishing about these essays is the balance between Baldwin's justified rage and his ability to laugh at the world--and at himself. Many of the essays resemble short stories in their structure and tension and humor, and Baldwin's writing is just as strong when he's angry as when he's lighthearted. Most important, none of these essays have dated in any significant way, and they still offer stirring insights on race and society in America.

Leaving Birmingham: Notes of a Native Son (Deep South Books)

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Great Perspective of the South during a Tumultous Time
A Student's Perspective
Probes the ethnic relationships in Birmingham
Not Just For Southerners

Leaving Birmingham: Notes of a Native Son (Deep South Books)
Paul Hemphill
Manufacturer: University Alabama Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0817310223

Customer Reviews:

Great Perspective of the South during a Tumultous Time.......2003-06-27

I decided to read this book for purely personal motives. Having been raised in California by a father who grew up in Birmingham in the early twenties and thirties, I had a desire to understand this man, my father, who seemed at times to have such radical world views. Reading Paul Hemphill's story, specifically the retelling of details of growing up in a working class family, including the bigoted views his father held, helped me to understand the world that molded many whites prior to the civil rights movement. When chosing this book, I wasn't looking for a dry detailed history but rather an insiders view of what this world of "Birmingham, Alabama" must have been like growing up. Why it created such biogtry? And How can we continue to change? Paul Hemphill, through this book, helped me to understand, what kind of a world Birmingham was, and how it shaped and molded the people who grew up there.

A Student's Perspective.......2002-03-19

This book was required reading for my Civil Rights class. Although at times a bit too detailed and tangent prone, Hemphill's style is very gripping and kept my attention. The way in which the formation and development of Birmingham is disussed, enterpreted, and explained is superb. Hemphill does an excellent job of juxtaposing the racial, economic, and social climate that evolved and gripped the city of Birmingham throughout the years. I would consider this autobiography of sorts a must read for any person interested in issues pertaining to the Civil Rights Movement. Just get through the few dry parts, the rest is well worth the read!

Probes the ethnic relationships in Birmingham.......2001-02-21

In 1963 Alabama was the site of racial violence: native Hemphill decides here to return to his hometown, to come to terms with his family and life. Leaving Birmingham probes the ethnic relationships in Birmingham past and present, providing an intriguing analysis of the tensions and present-day life.

Not Just For Southerners.......2000-08-24

The reader should note that this book is not a history, but an honest reminiscence by the author. Paul Hemphill was born and raised in a Birmingham that no longer exists, and his story is a sentimental, though often melancholy, remembrance of his journey from childhood to an adulthood marked by his departure from his native city. Unlike other native sons, such as Roy Blount and Howell Raines, who long ago moved to New York and have spent the majority of their adult lives apologizing for having been born in the South, Hemphill offers the reader a painfully honest autobiography that parallels the mutually exclusive forces of change and retrenchment within Birmingham before and after World War II. He presents an insightful glimpse of a city unique in the South, a city created atop one of the richest iron ore deposits in the country, with no antebellum, gentrified past, a tough, muscular city. It is a Birmingham as it truly was, a city divided not in two parts, but three: the Birmingham of poor, legally segregated blacks, the Birmingham of working-class whites who manned the steel, iron and coke factories during their height, and the Birmingham of the Mountain Brook overseers, the representatives of the absentee landlords who owned these factories, the men of a separate community entirely, who publicly stayed above the fray of civil rights strife, all the while stoking and manipulating the blue collar whites to whom civil rights appeared a supreme threat. It was into such a working-class family that Hemphill was born. His descriptions of his hard-working, traditionalist father, his mother and the neighborhood in which he grew up, are perhaps the finest elements of the book. It is evident that this was no easy book for Hemphill to write. He must counter-balance the admiration he holds for his parents and the joys of his childhood, with the ultimate revulsion he felt in adulthood toward a civilization predisposed all along toward heightened brutality. It is not only his personal journey, but the journey of Birmingham from "the Magic City" to "Bad Birmingham"; the journey of Bull Connor from "voice of the Barons" to the "voice of legalized segregation". Hemphill witnessed all of this and it is sadness, not cold judgement, that pervades this book and sets it apart from the many other books written about that city and that time. This reviewer highly recommends this book to anyone who has an interest in gaining a personal perspective of the Birmingham of mid-20th Century America.

Richard Wright's Native Son (Bloom's Notes)

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Stunning and Thought Provoking
A True Classic
He Never Had a Chance
Black and White
More Interesting As History Than Literature

Richard Wright's Native Son (Bloom's Notes)

Manufacturer: Chelsea House Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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ASIN: 0791040682

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Bigger Thomas is doomed, trapped in a downward spiral that will lead to arrest, prison, or death, driven by despair, frustration, poverty, and incomprehension. As a young black man in the Chicago of the '30s, he has no way out of the walls of poverty and racism that surround him, and after he murders a young white woman in a moment of panic, these walls begin to close in. There is no help for him--not from his hapless family; not from liberal do-gooders or from his well-meaning yet naive friend Jan; certainly not from the police, prosecutors, or judges. Bigger is debased, aggressive, dangerous, and a violent criminal. As such, he has no claim upon our compassion or sympathy. And yet...

A more compelling story than Native Son has not been written in the 20th century by an American writer. That is not to say that Richard Wright created a novel free of flaws, but that he wrote the first novel that successfully told the most painful and unvarnished truth about American social and class relations. As Irving Howe asserted in 1963, "The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever. It made impossible a repetition of the old lies [and] brought out into the open, as no one ever had before, the hatred, fear and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our culture."

Other books had focused on the experience of growing up black in America--including Wright's own highly successful Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of five stories that focused on the victimization of blacks who transgressed the code of racial segregation. But they suffered from what he saw as a kind of lyrical idealism, setting up sympathetic black characters in oppressive situations and evoking the reader's pity. In Native Son, Wright was aiming at something more. In Bigger, he created a character so damaged by racism and poverty, with dreams so perverted, and with human sensibilities so eroded, that he has no claim on the reader's compassion:

"I didn't want to kill," Bigger shouted. "But what I killed for, I am! It must've been pretty deep in me to make me kill! I must have felt it awful hard to murder.... What I killed for must've been good!" Bigger's voice was full of frenzied anguish. "It must have been good! When a man kills, it's for something... I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em. It's the truth..."

Wright's genius was that, in preventing us from feeling pity for Bigger, he forced us to confront the hopelessness, misery, and injustice of the society that gave birth to him. --Andrew Himes

Book Description

Often criticized for being bitter, Richard Wright's Native Son is examined in this text. A brief biography of the author is included, as well as structural and thematic analysis of the novel. Of course, numerous critical essays from prominent critics offer various views on the novel.

This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School. These texts are the ideal aid for all students of literature, presenting concise, easy-to-understand biographical, critical, and bibliographical information on a specific literary work. Also provided are multiple sources for book reports and term papers with a wealth of information on literary works, authors, and major characters.

Customer Reviews:

Stunning and Thought Provoking.......2007-10-07

It's been a decade since I read this book (I am planning on re-reading it soon, which is what brought me here) and I can still recall the impact this book had on me during the first read. The intersection of two very different lives - the young violent protagonist (?) and the misguided clueless rich girl and the events that follow. The scenes where the girl and her boyfriend are unwittingly patronizing our protagonist, their attempts to let him know he has their unwanted compassion so at odds with the survivor realities of his world so that they are almost (unknowingly) mocking him are just incredibly awkward and telling about our world in general. I can remember groaning out loud as the angry young man makes mistake after mistake, desperation clouding his judgement, yet his actions realistically parallel with real lives one reads about in the newspaper year after year. Excellent book - highly recommended.

A True Classic.......2007-08-27

(In all honesty I didn't actually READ the book. I listened to the unabridged audio version, but since it was the first audiobook I listened to I have no idea about the quality of the production versus other audiobooks. I'm just mentioning that in the interest of full disclosure.)

What separates an old book from a classic book? The classic book has themes and ideas that are relevant and important to readers decades or even centuries after its initial printing. "Native Son" fits this definition because its portrayal of the doomed young black man Bigger Thomas is just as relevant today as it was in 1940.

For the obligatory plot summary, Bigger Thomas is 20 years old and lives in one cramped, rat-infested room on Chicago's South Side with his mother, younger brother, and sister. At this point Bigger is already a petty criminal, sticking up some black businesses with his buddies Gus, Jack, and GH because the police don't care if black kids rob black businessmen. When he's offered a job as chauffeur to the rich white Dalton family, Bigger is reluctant at first, until he sees the Dalton's attractive daughter Mary on a Newsreel. But Mary is no Paris Hilton-style heiress partying her days away. She is involved with a Communist leader named Jan and has Bigger drive her to meet him. Jan and Mary's well-intentioned but heavy handed kindness towards Bigger makes him uncomfortable, more so when they ask him to take them to somewhere to eat on the South Side. This begins a night of drinking that leads to all three getting drunk, Mary most of all. She is so out of it that Bigger has to help her into the house. While standing over her bed, Mary's blind mother enters the room. Bigger panics and accidentally suffocates Mary. After this he panics further by stuffing her into the furnace. Soon enough this deception is found out and Bigger is a fugitive before finally being caught and brought to "justice."

If I were to nitpick I would say there's a little too much interior monologue that at times slows the story down to a crawl. And the speech by Bigger's lawyer goes on much too long so that it seems like his defensive plan is to filibuster. Those are very small and unimportant imperfections.

A quick word here on what this story is not: it is not a story about injustice. Bigger does commit the second-degree murder of Mary Dalton. He compounds this by fleeing, killing an unwitting accomplice, and resisting arrest. The only crime he's accused of he didn't commit was the rape of Mary Dalton--how officials could determine this since her body was burned I have no idea. This isn't a story like "To Kill A Mockingbird" about a black man being railroaded by the white courts.

"Native Son" is more complex than that. This is a book more about the causes that create a man like Bigger Thomas. It's about the oppressive society that caged young black men like him in the South Side, teaching them to fear and hate the white man so that he doesn't trust even well-meaning do-gooders like Jan and his lawyer. The killing of Mary Dalton is a by-product of the fear and ignorance bred by centuries of hatred and discrimination. That is of course the real injustice here.

For examples of how this message continues to be relevant, one need look no further than high-profile, racially-dividing cases like Michael Vick, OJ Simpson, or Rodney King among many others. While advances have been made since the time of "Native Son"'s first printing, every day there are still new Bigger Thomases being created and stuffed into an already overcrowded prison system. That's what makes "Native Son" a true classic.

He Never Had a Chance.......2007-01-23

"The Native Son" delivers a chilling account of how an ordinary Black American, living in 1930s Chicago, can commit a heinous crime and subsequent cover-up, for the systemic racism and oppression present in America helped to create the conditions in which this horrendous act could occur. "The Native Son", written before the modern Civil Rights movement, does not issue a blanket amnesty for the crimes committed by Blacks, but helps the reader to understand the mindset of a Black living in this oppressed and segregated society where hope abounds only in the afterlife. Although Communists are portrayed sympathetically, this novel is not a call for a "revolution" or blatant propaganda against the "rich."

Wright explores racism and its effects, not only on the oppressed, but also on the oppressors. Bigger, the oppressed, fails to see whites as individuals and stereotypes all as racist bigots who intend only to harm him. Of course, there are plenty of these individuals about, yet there are genuine decent whites who Bigger fails to see as human. On the other side, of course, is the systemic abuse of Blacks as they are forced to live into a small section of the South Side in decrepit ghettos. Remarkably, this is a step up from their sharecropping days in the Jim Crow South, where Bigger grew up. However, even those whites who deem themselves to be sympathetic to the "Colored" cause, such as the Daltons, are condescending and arrogant. The Daltons, typical guilty liberals, have contributed thousands to the NAACP, yet they indirectly control the real estate company that reaps the benefits of the segregated society and the artificially higher rents in the black tenements. Even Mary and Jan, who attempt to treat Bigger as an equal, do so in a degrading and condescending manner as they attempt to understand his "people". Indeed, when this large wall of separation is breached, rabid fear is instilled in Bigger, which leads to his acts of murder.

Blindness is a recurrent theme throughout, as Mrs. Dalton is literally blind, yet it is the entire society that is blind to the plight of the likes of Bigger Thomas. Of course, Bigger is also blind to the other side and has bred hate and contempt for all whites, even those that do good. Throughout Bigger's journey of self-awareness in prison, he attempts to break through this blindness and to see his purpose in life. Tragically, only as he awaits his final fate does he realize that his white enemies and himself share the same fears and hopes and insecurities.

Although the first two-thirds of this novel will leave you spell-bound with its details and its suspense, I was expecting a letdown in the final part of the novel and a rehash of "The Jungle" syndrome, as I'll call it. In "The Jungle", Sinclair provides a scintillating story in the first part of the novel, but this serves only as a pretext to the blatant Socialist propaganda in its final part (no thanks, Mr. Sinclair). And though the last part of "The Native Son" espouses Wright's philosophy on racial oppression and may be sympathetic toward Socialist ideals, it is more of a subtle warning against the conditions that existed at that time which were a powder keg for future violent racial strife. Although there are definitely aspects which serve to blame society and divorce responsibility from his actions, in the end Bigger does take responsibility and comes to an understanding that he may have been oppressed and victimized, yet there were outlets other than violence for his despair.

Overall, Wright provides a chilling account of the state of race relations in 1930s Chicago and in America, in general. Although some may interpret Wright's novel as an attempt to deflect responsibility and to blame society for the actions of others, I believe Wright is attempting to distill a much deeper meaning and understanding for all races to come together.

Black and White.......2006-10-08

It is a stunning story of a 20 year old black youth, Bigger Thomas, born and raised in Chicago slum in a fatherless home. He has known prejudice, white scorn and poverty all his life, a life without hope future or any meaning. When he gets a job as a chauffer in a good Samaritan white family, he is happy and yet bit resentful of their patronizing, their condescending manner. On the very first outing with their young daughter and her communist friend, tragedy strikes due exclusively to Bigger's sub- conscience fear of association with white women. Once he commits the ultimate crime, inadvertently as it was, it spirals out of control and one need not wonder about the denouement.

When the case goes to trial, Bigger's attorney makes eloquent, convincing case of three hundred year history of slavery, bigotry, hatred that resulted in such inevitable tragedy. He concludes Bigger was a victim of society, a world at large with its own rules and customs where he was a pariah from the day he was born. Bigger could not comprehend that not all whites hate blacks and harbor bigotry.

It is a fascinating account of racism in the twentieth century America. I wonder how much progress we have made since the book's first publication in 1950. It is a must read.

More Interesting As History Than Literature.......2006-09-09

It is not simple to review this novel, since its success and value depend a great deal on what the reader is looking for. Purely as entertainment -- is it an enjoyable (however you want to define that) read? -- the book is spotty. My edition runs about 500 pages, including a lengthy, self-important introduction by the author, and I found the middle 250 pages very compelling reading; I really wanted to know what happened next. The beginning and end were far less interesting. This is attributable largely to the author's very obvious intent to use the novel as a means to convey a Message, and his limited skill. Rather than have the message emerge as an implication of the story, the characters instead are crudely-drawn stereotypes designed to portray and declare, in very broad strokes, the author's philosophical beliefs, which are not at all subtle. Time and time again I came across passages that were so heavy-handed and preachy, with the narrator forcing his views down the reader's throat between the characters' chessboard-like moves, that I thought they'd make excellent examples of bad writing for a class of beginning novelists.

The book therefore must be valued, if at all, for the author's message and the novel's place in history as one of the first to try to address it. I find it difficult to imagine that a modern reader could find the author's premise -- that centuries of oppression made blacks capable of acting in a manner that those in the dominant culture would consider inhumanly brutal -- particularly new and revealing, but it's important to consider that it apparently was so when the book was written only sixty-six years ago, itself an important commentary on American society. The book therefore would be an excellent addition to the reading list for a class on history or sociology.

Taken out of historical context (i.e., ignoring the fact that this was a new perspective at the time and setting aside the tremendous credit due Wright for having written it when he did), I found it unpersuasive. This is not to say that conditions have changed so much that what may have been true in 1940 has little relevance today, but that the author failed to persuade me that a brutal rapist and murderer who, the author acknowledges, has virtually no redeeming qualities, and never showed any remorse, should be spared, in 1940 or today, the death penalty, unless it is assumed the death penalty is per se never appropriate. This is certainly a reasonable view, and at very least a point worth debating, but it is not the author's point, which is that his protagonist should be spared because Society Made Him Do It -- a point that he tries to make in an attorney's speech that (speaking as an attorney) is terribly inept. (In fact, after taking hundreds of pages to get to the point where Wright finally takes the opportunity to express his perspective directly, I felt the author fell flat on his face.) I know of far better crafted works that have since been written that are both more interesting and more persuasive about the author's intended message, and I'm by no means very knowledgeable about this genre (Manchild in the Promised Land and the Autobiography of Malcolm X come to mind.)

So as an historical document, I'd give this five stars, but if its historical context doesn't interest you, I'd pass.

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Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin
Manufacturer: Beacon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Notes of a Native Son

Manufacturer: Bantam Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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ASIN: B000BCM2WG

Native Sons: A Friendship that Created One of the Greatest Works of the 20th Century: Notes of a Native Son

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Native Sons: A Friendship that Created One of the Greatest Works of the 20th Century: Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin , and Sol Stein
Manufacturer: One World/Ballantine
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0345469356
Release Date: 2004-08-03

Book Description

James Baldwin was beginning to be recognized as the most brilliant black writer of his generation when his first book of essays, Notes of a Native Son, established his reputation in 1955. No one was more pleased by the book’s reception than Baldwin’s high school friend Sol Stein. A rising New York editor, novelist, and playwright, Stein had suggested that Baldwin do the book and coaxed his old friend through the long and sometimes agonizing process of putting the volume together and seeing it into print. Now, in this fascinating new book, Sol Stein documents the story of his intense creative partnership with Baldwin through newly uncovered letters, photos, inscriptions, and an illuminating memoir of the friendship that resulted in one of the classics of American literature. Included in this book are the two works they created together–the story “Dark Runner” and the play Equal in Paris, both published here for the first time.

Though a world of difference separated them–Baldwin was black and gay, living in self-imposed exile in Europe; Stein was Jewish and married, with a growing family to support–the two men shared the same fundamental passion. Nothing mattered more to either of them than telling and writing the truth, which was not always welcome. As Stein wrote Baldwin in a long, heartfelt letter, “You are the only friend with whom I feel comfortable about all three: heart, head, and writing.” In this extraordinary book, Stein unfolds how that shared passion played out in the months surrounding the creation and publication of Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, in which Baldwin’s main themes are illuminated.

A literary event published to honor the eightieth anniversary of James Baldwin’s birth, Native Sons is a celebration of one of the most fruitful and influential friendships in American letters.

James Baldwin's go tell it on the mountain and another country,: The fire next time, Giovanni's notes of a native son (Monarch Press)

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James Baldwin's go tell it on the mountain and another country,: The fire next time, Giovanni's notes of a native son (Monarch Press)
Charlotte A Alexander
Manufacturer: Monarch Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
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The Life Writing of Otherness: Woolf, Baldwin, Kingston, and Winterson (Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory)

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The Life Writing of Otherness: Woolf, Baldwin, Kingston, and Winterson (Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory)
Lauren Rusk
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Writing | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0815336551

Book Description

This book proposes a way to read autobiographical writing by those the dominant deem "other" than themselves. Focusing on innovative works by Woolf, Baldwin, Kingston, and Winterson, the author analyzes how they each represent the self as unique, collectively "other," and inclusively human, and how these conflicting aspects of selfhood interact.

Monarch Notes for Richard Wright's Native Son: A critical guide to appreciation of meaning, form, and style (Complete background, plot discussion, novelistic techniques, theme development, characther analysis, survey of criticism, bibliography, essay questions, essay questions, model answers)

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Monarch Notes for Richard Wright's Native Son: A critical guide to appreciation of meaning, form, and style (Complete background, plot discussion, novelistic techniques, theme development, characther analysis, survey of criticism, bibliography, essay questions, essay questions, model answers)
Richard Wright
Manufacturer: Monarch
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: B000M73094

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