With the exception of Charles Williams, the rest of the Inklings were highly educated authors that were well educated from a young age in the classics and other languages and literature. While, Baldwin was younger than all of the Inklings, they were all alive and writing at the same time. I read this right after I finished the group biography of The Inklings (The Fellowship by Philip and Carol Zaleski). After reading this, I can see why Ta-Nehisi Coates is so often compared to James Baldwin. I highly recommend this Notes of a Native Son (and I am Not Your Negro) and look forward to picking up some of BaldwinвЂ™s fiction as well.

Race impacted every part of his life, whether he was in the US or Europe. But as an African American man in the 1950s, Baldwin could not think of life without thinking about race. Many White essayists assume their culture as normative and donвЂ™t particularly think about race in regard to their normal everyday life. The idea of a вЂcolor-blindвЂ™ ideal society destroyed by BaldwinвЂ™s writing.

The last section is what it meant to be Black in Europe and what he understood about Blackness because of the change of setting. BaldwinвЂ™s father died on BaldwinвЂ™s 19th birthday and Baldwin left soon after to move to Paris.

BaldwinвЂ™s father was not going to be missed much, although once he was gone, Baldwin was able to deal with his love for him. Eulogies often gloss over the negatives of a person and highlight what will be missed. The eulogy essay is the best essay of the book I think. The three essays in section two are about growing up and living in Harlem, his brotherвЂ™s musical groupвЂ™s ill fated trip to the South as entertainment for a political campaign and a eulogy for his father. Section two and three were some of the best essays I have ever read and I want to go back and read them again. This section would likely have been much better if I was familiar with the works being talked about. The first section are literally and film criticism essays (Uncle TomвЂ™s Cabin, A Native Son and Carmen Jones.) I have not read or watched any of these, although I knew the basic outline of the story of the first two. After watching that very good documentary I finally picked up Notes of a Native Son, which I purchased a while ago but I have not read. I recently went to see the documentary I am Not Your Negro.

The essays collected here create a cohesive sketch of Black America and reveal an intimate portrait of Baldwin's own search for identity as an artist, as a Black man, and as an American. Notesis the book that established Baldwin's voice as a social critic, and it remains one of his most admired works. Naturally, this combination of brazen criticism and unconventional empathy for White readers won Baldwin as much condemnation as praise. He was also one of the few writing on race at the time who addressed the issue with a powerful mixture of outrage at the gross physical and political violence against Black citizens and measured understanding of their oppressors, which helped awaken a White audience to the injustices under their noses. His criticism on topics such as the paternalism of White progressives or on his own friend Richard Wright's work is pointed and unabashed. Notes of a Native Son inaugurated Baldwin as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the 20th century, and many of his observations have proven almost prophetic. With a keen eye, he examines everything from the significance of the protest novel to the motives and circumstances of the many Black expatriates of the time, from his home in 'The Harlem Ghetto' to a sobering 'Journey to Atlanta.' Writing as an artist, activist, and social critic, Baldwin probes the complex condition of being Black in America. Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his 20s, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of Black life and Black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era. At last, a new audio edition of the book many have called James Baldwin's most influential work!

Notes of a native son audio