Research Catalog

Title

Notes of a native son / by James Baldwin.

Author

Baldwin, James, 1924-1987

Publication

• Boston : Beacon Press, [1955]
• ©1955

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

ix, 175 pages; 22 cm

Summary

James Baldwin was among the most eloquent writers in mid-20th-century America to deal with black-white relations. His first published essays on the subject were initially collected in this penetrating and impassioned book, Held up to view are the failure of the "protest novel" from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Richard Wright; the falseness of the 1954 movie Carmen Jones, in which blacks play their roles as whites; the Harlem ghetto with its many churches doing "a fairly desperate emotional business," and its press seeking to emulate the white press. In the moving title essay, his father's funeral, set in the wreckage of a race riot, forces young Baldwin to examine the hostile relationship that existed between father and son. Finding America intolerable, Baldwin exiled himself in Europe for nearly ten years. He tells of the meeting of the American black with the African; of a harrowing Christmas sojourn in a Paris jail because of a friend's stolen bedsheet; and finally, the poignant and haunting essay of the first visit of a black person to a remote Swiss village, where he is treated as a living wonder and never becomes more than a stranger in the village.--Adapted from book jacket.

Subject

• Baldwin, James, 1924-1987
• 1900-1999
• African American authors > Biography
• African American gay men > Biography
• African American political activists > Biography
• African Americans > France > Social conditions
• Black people > France > Social conditions
• African Americans > Civil rights > New York (State) > New York > 20th century
• African Americans > New York (State) > New York > Social conditions > 20th century
• African Americans > Race identity
• African Americans > Intellectual life > 20th century
• Racism against Black people > United States
• Race discrimination > United States
• Segregation > United States
• African Americans
• Race relations
• African American LGBTQ+ people
• African American gay men
• Racism
• African American political activists
• African Americans > Social conditions
• Black people > Social conditions
• Black people
• African Americans > Civil rights
• African Americans > Intellectual life
• Racism against Black people
• Race discrimination
• Segregation
• Ethnic relations
• African American authors
• United States > Ethnic relations > 20th century
• United States > Race relations > 20th century
• Harlem (New York, N.Y.) > Race relations > 20th century
• United States
• New York (State) > New York
• New York (State) > New York > Harlem
• France

Genre/Form

• Essays.
• Gay biographies.
• LGBTQ+ biographies.
• Biographies.

Note

• Essays.

Contents

Autobiographical notes -- Everybody's protest novel -- Many thousands gone -- Carmen Jones : the dark is light enough -- The Harlem ghetto -- Journey to Atlanta -- Notes of a native son -- Encounter on the Seine : black meets brown -- A question of identity -- Equal in Paris -- Stranger in the village.

Call Number

Sc 323.173-B (Baldwin, J. Notes of a native son)

LCCN

55011325

OCLC

170299

Author

Baldwin, James, 1924-1987, author.

Title

Notes of a native son / by James Baldwin.

Publisher

Boston : Beacon Press, [1955]

Copyright Date

©1955

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Local Note

Schomburg copy with dust jacket (Sc D 23-980).

Local Subject

Black author.

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Research Call Number

Sc D 23-980