In an age of Black Lives Matter James Baldwin's essays on life in Harlem the protest novel movies and African Americans abroad are as powerful today as when they were first written. With documentaries like I Am Not Your Negro bringing renewed interest to Baldwin's life and work Notes of a Native Son serves as a valuable introduction.
Written during the 1940s and early 1950s when Baldwin was only in his twenties 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. Writing as an artist activist and social critic Baldwin probes the complex condition of being black in America. 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.??
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 twentieth century?? and many of his observations have proven almost prophetic. His criticism on topics