James Baldwin

James Baldwin's essay on “black language” makes a lot of good, quality points on human nature and how people judge each other and our ways of speaking and our actions. Now, he’s not saying that’s absolutely a bad thing, but I feel as though it could be both a good thing AND a bad thing, depending on the situation and how you look at it. I’ve had personal experiences both bad and good from people judging me as a person based on my speech tendencies and my dialect. Although some say it is not…

Drug addiction has contributed to a large portion of cultural foundations in The United States. Throughout the decades, the use of drugs has sculpted the principals of life in a majority of all ethnic backgrounds. “Sonny’s Blues”, written by James Baldwin, conveys a first person view of the effects of drug addiction and the recovery processes power to bring family back together after an immense amount of hardship. Throughout “Sonny’s Blues”, Sonny has been released from jail and is dealing with…

In Sonny’s Blues, by James Baldwin, we start out by meeting the narrator, an unnamed, middle-aged African-American male. He is riding the subway to work and he opens his newspaper to find out that his younger brother, Sonny, has been arrested for distributing and using heroin. Although he and his brother have been distant in the past, this traumatic event seems to make his brother real to him again. He continues on to work to teach his algebra class at a local high school in Harlem, but all…

James Baldwin James Baldwin's literature often creates and evokes a sense of reality and awareness from the reader. Baldwin generally writes about social issues based on his own experiences. Some of these experiences had to do with racial discrimination, religion, and sexual orientation. James Baldwin was a black and very educated man. He was an essayist, author, playwright, and novelist. Baldwin was born in Harlem, New York on August 2, 1924, and died on December 1, 1987, in Saint-Paul de…

In James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time,” Baldwin scrutinizes American society and deteriorating race relations. He implores a new level of communication and understanding between black and white Americans. In his two essays, Baldwin discusses his experience as an African American and how Christianity has led to oppression of differing people. Collectively, Baldwin illustrates an alternative way for his nephew, moreover the black community, to address their anger and outrage with white Americans.…

“My Dungeon Shook” by James Baldwin, Baldwin warns his nephew and black youth in general to not let poisonous words or ideas seep into their dungeons and destroy who they are and the potential they have. Young minds are the most malleable and vulnerable to the world around them. While warning his nephew and other black youth, Baldwin addresses the innocents, people who ignore the racial tension and hate crimes. Through unapologetic candor and various rhetorical devices Baldwin warns his nephew…

Am Not Your Negro" by Raoul Peck, Screenplay by James Baldwin, when I hear about James Baldwin I interpret a hardworking, courageous, fighting human being. He fights for what he believes in and does not give up until he achieves what he strives for. In the documentary I am Not Your Negro It is all about James Baldwin. It is also about the struggles he has been through along with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. These men were a big impact on Baldwin and on how he wrote and how he acted. The…

6, 2024 Annotated Bibliography Birmingham, Kevin. “No Name in the South: James Baldwin and the Monuments of Identity.” African American Review, vol. 44, no. 4 -. 1/2, 2011, pp. 113-117. 221–34. The syllable of the syllable. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41328716. Kevin Birmingham’s article argues that Baldwin connects his criticism of the American South to his ideological critique of ethnic identity. Moreover, Baldwin views the hegemonic American culture as inherently oppressing the culture…

James Baldwin accomplished things when he wrote “Sonny’s Blues—not only is the story a memoir of the lives of African Americans in Harlem in the 1950’s but also a story about the struggles and decisions that affect family and brotherhood. Harlem, the setting, traps the African Americans who call it home; it traps them in a life of poverty, crime, and anger. Two brothers choose very different paths: the narrator becomes a respectable teacher whose goal is to assimilate into a white society, and…

Living nevily and showing ignorance towards suffering is no way to live at all, we must accept the tragedies of life in order to move on . In Sonny’s blues, by James Baldwin, the Narrator discovers that his brother, the title character Sonny, has been caught for peddling and using heroin, throughout the story he attempts to understand why and discover how he can change Sonny’s habits. The Narrator, in denial about the suffering he has become accustomed to in Harlem, can deny it no more after…