Notes of a Native Son

"This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again."

Baldwin can WRITE. Recommended.

A fantastic, hard, important book about black people, white people, and what really makes America special. Obviously dated in many ways -- no computers, written during Jim Crow, in a much less worldly time -- but just as relevant today as it was when written in 1955. I wasn't expecting the complexity of language, like I was reading an academic book, or a book written for a very different kind of audience. I don't know if our written language has just changed that much in 60 years, that's his writing style, or what, but I could always feel the writing through the book. Every essay was deep, was wandering, forcing me through a constricting experience to enable me, just at the end, often only in a paragraph or two closing a many paged essay, what he thinks and sees. A truly great book, and truly American. I am not so shallow as to suggest I understand, but hopefully I understand more. Certainly I can think more deeply about the role and perspective of at least the black man (for that is principally what he addresses) in America.

3.5/5 Insightful and poetic. It is clear Baldwin was a gifted writer. For me, the first three essays discussing films didn't really connect with me at all. The second and third section which examined Baldwin's personal experiences in both the US and France were phenomenal. Favourites - A Question of Identity, Equal in Paris, Notes of a Native Son & Encounter on the Seine: Black meets Brown.

It is one of my absolutely favorite books by James Baldwin. Sometimes while I was reading it I had the feeling this book was written two weeks ago and not a couple of decades. Definitely a book that has to be part of every American curriculum.

There are some really good essays in here (I especially liked "Stranger in the Village," "Journey to Atlanta," and the title essay), but there's enough here that's pinned to specific details (e.g. magazines or newspapers) of the time and place in which they were written that my interest wasn't always maxed out.