The Harlem Ghetto: Essays

by James Baldwin

This collectible edition celebrates James Baldwin’s 100th-year anniversary, revealing and critiquing the realities of Black life in mid-century USOriginally published in Notes of a Native Son, the essays "The Harlem Ghetto," "Journey to Atlanta," and "Notes of a Native Son" will appeal to those interested in the personal and political turmoil of Baldwin's life.“The Harlem Ghetto” introduces readers to the extremities of life in Baldwin’s native city. “Journey to Atlanta” depicts the faulty relationship between the Black community and the politician, following a quartet called The Melodeers on a trip to Atlanta under the auspices of the Progressive Party. Baldwin concludes this collection with “Notes of A Native Son,” a powerful autobiographical essay about his fractured relationship with his father.The Harlem Essays explores the American condition through a mix of analytic and autobiographical essays. This second collection in the Baldwin centennial anniversary series is Baldwin’s most personal as he grapples with his childhood and his own affinity with Blackness.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays

120 pages, Hardcover

Published July 2, 2024

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Works of American writer James Arthur Baldwin, outspoken critic of racism, include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), a novel, and Notes of a Native Son (1955), a collection of essays.

James Arthur Baldwin authored plays and poems in society.

He came as the eldest of nine children; his stepfather served as a minister. At 14 years of age in 1938, Baldwin preached at the small fireside Pentecostal church in Harlem. From religion in the early 1940s, he transferred his faith to literature with the still evident impassioned cadences of black churches. From 1948, Baldwin made his home primarily in the south of France but often returned to the United States of America to lecture or to teach.

In his Giovanni's Room, a white American expatriate must come to terms with his homosexuality. In 1957, he began spending half of each year in city of New York.

James Baldwin offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s.
He first partially autobiographically accounted his youth. His influential Nobody Knows My Name and The Fire Next Time informed a large white audience. Another Country talks about gay sexual tensions among intellectuals of New York. Segments of the black nationalist community savaged his gay themes. Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers stated the Baldwin displayed an "agonizing, total hatred of blacks." People produced Blues for Mister Charlie , play of Baldwin, in 1964. Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, defended Baldwin.

Going to Meet the Man and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone provided powerful descriptions. He as an openly gay man increasingly in condemned discrimination against lesbian persons.

From stomach cancer, Baldwin died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. People buried his body at the Ferncliff cemetery in Hartsdale near city of New York.

Reviews

[Dre · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.54 / 5 💫

[Darcy J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

| completed my personal goal of reading 120 books in 2024! And what better way to celebrate than with one of my favorite authors and activists, James Baldwin. The Harlem Ghetto was my 120th book of the year!

My family often tells me I walk around with my fist up. History and the present will make you...✊🏾

In three essays, James Baldwin expresses what it is to be Black in America as it relates to Black leaders, the media, religion, politicians, artists, and the family dynamic. Even though these essays are set in the 1950s, I found myself asking "What has changed?!" after every page.
'...the nicely refined torture a man can experience from having been created and defeated by the same circumstances. That is, Negro leaders have been created by the American scene, which therafter works against them at every point."

My favorite part of any James Baldwin work is how he effortlessly calls out the reality of us in our community and he does not hold back when it comes to racism, its reality, privilege, and the standards we are held to as Black people, only to be met with with the iron fist of white supremacy even when we do "what's right," or be "one of the "good ones." (That's never a compliment btw).

"Journey to Atlanta" and "Notes of a Native Son," essays are included in this book as well and are very fitting for an election year and hopefully you'll check them out...and VOTE.
Don't get it twisted 😉

[Amaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

his prose is so eloquent, insightful, and full of meaning. so much understanding of himself, of his relationships, and of his conditions at the time. so much to learn from, and such a great read!

[Gloria Cangahuala · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Baldwin's writing is beautiful, even when he's writing about ugly things. The three essays in this collection give the reader a look inside the racial turmoil of Baldwin's time (and how, sadly enough, we haven't made much progress since then), as well as an intimate look inside his fractured relationship with his mentally ill father. These essays offer a stark and unapologetic look at the prejudices of not only white people but black people as well, and how those prejudices feed into an ever-spiraling racial conflict. This collection is insightful and painful and NECESSARY to read. And while Baldwin doesn't convey any hope for improvement in race relations, he doesn't convey hopelessness either. Sort of a "this is the way it is" tone that, despite its matter-of-factness, still conveys the deep, roiling emotions wraught from the way that it is.

[Merricat Blackwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

“But the year which preceded my father’s death had made a great change in my life. I had been living in New Jersey, working in defense plants, working and living among southerners, white and black. I knew about the south, of course, and about how southerners treated Negroes and how they expected them to behave, but it had never entered my mind that anyone would look at me and expect me to behave that way. I learned in New Jersey that to be a Negro meant, precisely, that one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the color of one’s skin caused in other people. I acted in New Jersey as I had always acted, that is as though I thought a great deal of myself--I had to act that way--with results that were, simply, unbelievable. I had scarcely arrived before I had earned the enmity, which was extraordinarily ingenious, of all my superiors and nearly all my co-workers. In the beginning, to make matters worse, I simply did not know what was happening. I did not know what I had done, and I shortly began to wonder what anyone could possibly do, to bring about such unanimous, active, and unbearably vocal hostility. I knew about jim-crow but I had never experienced it. I went to the same self-service restaurant three times and stood with all the Princeton boys before the counter, waiting for a hamburger and coffee; it was always an extraordinarily long time before anything was set before me; but it was not until the fourth visit that I learned that, in fact, nothing had ever been set before me: I had simply picked something up. Negroes were not served there, I was told, and they had been waiting for me to realize that I was always the only Negro present. Once I was told this, I determined to go there all the time. But now they were ready for me and, though some dreadful scenes were subsequently enacted in that restaurant, I never ate there again.”

This is from the essay “Notes of a Native Son,” a really astonishing piece of writing. It is flawlessly economical and covers a huge amount of emotional and argumentative ground in a short text, with a sense of the great urgency of moving forward. It is profoundly emotionally affecting, the more so for the fact that its emotional language is frank and undramatic and that it never particularly asks for sympathy. It speaks clearly about a historical turning point about which I don’t know much and the importance of which I maybe have not properly appreciated, namely the experiences of Black soldiers in World War II on southern army bases and the reality that their own white compatriots were often more dangerous to them than enemy soldiers. And it has the carefully balanced and revelatory structure of a great short story; see the “wilderness of smashed plate glass” on the first page and the way the whole essay builds toward fully explicating that scene. The other two essays in this book, “The Harlem Ghetto” and “Journey to Atlanta,” are less substantial and moved me less, but are still obviously the product of the same genius.

[Bunnie Girl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Baldwin’s essays herein draft a sentiment in three parts: the first is a portrait of Harlem life; the second, an anecdotal account of the ties between the Black community and the political class; the third, a biographically detailing of the tragic relationship between Baldwin and his father. The sentiment captured is, in so many words, the arduous lens of Blackness in twentieth-century America.

The idiosyncratic Baldwin cadence proliferates throughout the text – as is the charm indicative of his entire canon. Baldwin, like Whitman, is a Titan of literature. He is, like Proust, a prophet. It would hardly be irrelevant to contextualize any commentary I could make of Baldwin’s work without first accepting and pointing attention to the fact that it is with little doubt that he is among my favorite writers of all time, and, assuredly, one of my life’s oldest and dearest heroes.

Baldwin probes the police, the Black press, Black politicians, Black advertising, as well as religion and its institutions in Harlem; observing the bare bones race, class, and denominational tensions abounding. He traverses the nepotism and the alienation of a society divided. His diction, sharp and accusatory with the “subterranean assumption” that those with eyes to see can, in fact, take his ferocity as a labor of love.

That the piece informs without claiming to really be news serves as evidence of its merits and, drudgingly accepting the fact, that it is necessary to write.

[Jane Fudger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read all of James Baldwin's novels but none of his non fiction/essays. This short book iscorporates three essays:

1] "The Harlem Ghetto" - a description of Harlem in the 1920's and 1930's and how people live in and manage their lives in what Baldwin describes as a ghetto.

2] "A Journey to Atlanta" - a story recounted by Baldwin's younger brother David when he travels to Georgia on a gospel tour at the age of sixteen and the problems they incurred simply because they were black.

3] "A Native Son" - about the authotr growing up in New York and the racism he incurred with the result of Baldwin ultimately moving to live in France

A thought provoking read and excellently written

[Dr. Lehman L Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ran across this book at an estate sale and bought it. I read the first chapter and was so disappointed at how similar the issues of the black community of the 1959’s remain issues 70 years later. It is clear that what I perceived as a significant success of equal rights since the time Mr Baldwin describes is very constrained. The writing is crisp and passionate. The chapters spread his observations to the American South. These descriptions only amplified the ongoing issues of the black communities. I am glad I read this but I am so disappointed in the state of the nation.

[Zoë · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very quick read. and I loved it. although these are essays, they were very poetic and well written. Despite being poetic essays, they were very easy to follow. His diction was incredible.
Everything he mentions is still very applicable to today and it's very worth exploring the similarities.

[Rosa]

I feel guilty for not finishing this book, as Baldwin deserves all the respect. What he wrote about Harlem in the '50s remains just as relevant today. I just wasn’t in the mood to read about what’s wrong when I’m already living it.

[Z❄️ina · Rating 4 out of 5]

The irony of being black in a white America has seeped into Baldwin's writing, and maybe his ability to put it into words has made us see it in a more clear way.

[Vijay Ramesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated and this was an immutable law".

I should get my hands on 'Notes of a Native son' soon.

[Matt Alonso · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last essay was crazy good

[Ana_Oliveira · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️