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The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985
The works of James Baldwin constitute one of the major contributions to American literature in the twentieth century, and nowhere is this more evident than in The Price of the Ticket, a compendium of nearly fifty years of Baldwin's powerful nonfiction writing.
With truth and insight, these personal, prophetic works speak to the heart of the experience of race and identity in the United States. Here are the full texts of Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street and The Devil Finds Work, along with dozens of other pieces, ranging from a 1948 review of Raintree Country to a magnificent introduction to this book that, as so many of Mr. Baldwin's works do, combines his intensely private experience with the deepest examination of social interaction between the races.
In a way, The Price of the Ticket is an intellectual history of the twentieth-century American experience; in another, it is autobiography of the highest order.
With truth and insight, these personal, prophetic works speak to the heart of the experience of race and identity in the United States. Here are the full texts of Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street and The Devil Finds Work, along with dozens of other pieces, ranging from a 1948 review of Raintree Country to a magnificent introduction to this book that, as so many of Mr. Baldwin's works do, combines his intensely private experience with the deepest examination of social interaction between the races.
In a way, The Price of the Ticket is an intellectual history of the twentieth-century American experience; in another, it is autobiography of the highest order.
712 pages, Hardcover
First published September 15, 1985
172 people are currently reading
7433 people want to read
About the author
James Baldwin
385 books16.8k followersLibrarian 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
March 4, 2015
It took me awhile to catch the rhythm of his writing. And it took me even longer to start appreciating his message. Many of the early pieces are angry and critical and difficult to read--difficult for me as a white person. And I kept being mad that so much of what he holds against the U.S. deals with what the white MAN has done to the black MAN, including hurting or taking "his" women and children. I resented the sexism and I resented the anger directed at me. And then I kept reading and I understood better. I realized that my initial reaction to write him off for being sexist was exactly the kind of thing he was discussing in his writing--that human beings (to say nothing of white or black or men or women) seem to prefer to defend their position, even if they haven't spent any time thinking about whether or not it's defensible, rather than hear someone else out. Because to change one's mind might mean taking action, which most people are too lazy or cowardly to do. So I started listening better, if only because I, too, share a desire for people to THINK about why they believe things and to have good reasons for their personal ideas and ideals. And then I found Baldwin to be compassionate (talking about his little brothers and sisters during his father's funeral, their little legs the only thing holding them up), uncompromising, principled, and...still difficult. But difficult in a positive way--asking people to work hard every day to make the world a better place, to make their best visions of themselves and the world into a reality. With action. With never taking the easy way. With never biting their tongues in the face of bigotry, hatred, and injustice. And that's a hard way to live.
His historical interpretations are useful and important--the unexplored heritage of the U.S. as related to slavery, the colonial economy, all of that. The ways in which slavery and the doctrine of white supremacy hurt ALL people--black people in more obvious ways, but white people, too, by telling them not to delve too deeply into the motives of the past, the relations of the present, not to feel the guilt, to maintain distance from all people. Many of his generalizations are just that, but he has hit on some important concepts (I'm reminded of the "I need feminism" memes going around asking all people to explain what they can gain from feminism, not just that feminism "takes" things from men and "gives" them to women) that make it possible for U.S. Americans to realize that the past has shaped us all, that these views of each other aren't productive, and that a better way could be possible--envisioning the RELIEF when we can lay all of that down with the hope of picking up something lighter and better. The idea that the U.S. does not respect independent intellectual labor--the thinker is always a potential challenger to all of the surface-living that U.S. Americans do. That is at once an indictment of the country but also a prescription for its improvement.
And then to see him confront himself across the years in Dark Days: to go from the young man saying I will never fight for a country that never fought for me to the older man visiting that younger man in jail. To recognize his role changed as time went by. He sees the SLOW moving of history; he may not accept it, or may not accept what it means in terms of delayed justice, but he acknowledges it and seems to maintain a sort of hope from the idea of the passage of time, the crumbling of empires.
I found him at his best when he combines his analysis of history (McCarthyism, the Vietnam war, the Civil Rights Movement), his personal history of growing up in Harlem and his trips to the South and to Europe, and his critique of popular culture, especially film. The combination is transcendent, making something beautiful out of some ugly pieces into a synergistic whole.
His historical interpretations are useful and important--the unexplored heritage of the U.S. as related to slavery, the colonial economy, all of that. The ways in which slavery and the doctrine of white supremacy hurt ALL people--black people in more obvious ways, but white people, too, by telling them not to delve too deeply into the motives of the past, the relations of the present, not to feel the guilt, to maintain distance from all people. Many of his generalizations are just that, but he has hit on some important concepts (I'm reminded of the "I need feminism" memes going around asking all people to explain what they can gain from feminism, not just that feminism "takes" things from men and "gives" them to women) that make it possible for U.S. Americans to realize that the past has shaped us all, that these views of each other aren't productive, and that a better way could be possible--envisioning the RELIEF when we can lay all of that down with the hope of picking up something lighter and better. The idea that the U.S. does not respect independent intellectual labor--the thinker is always a potential challenger to all of the surface-living that U.S. Americans do. That is at once an indictment of the country but also a prescription for its improvement.
And then to see him confront himself across the years in Dark Days: to go from the young man saying I will never fight for a country that never fought for me to the older man visiting that younger man in jail. To recognize his role changed as time went by. He sees the SLOW moving of history; he may not accept it, or may not accept what it means in terms of delayed justice, but he acknowledges it and seems to maintain a sort of hope from the idea of the passage of time, the crumbling of empires.
I found him at his best when he combines his analysis of history (McCarthyism, the Vietnam war, the Civil Rights Movement), his personal history of growing up in Harlem and his trips to the South and to Europe, and his critique of popular culture, especially film. The combination is transcendent, making something beautiful out of some ugly pieces into a synergistic whole.
September 13, 2014
Having wracked my brain for another possible contender for the title, I think the only genuine challenger to Baldwin as greatest American essayist of the late 20th century would be Gore Vidal.
And that comparison is telling, because one quickly realizes Baldwin's superiority even to the brilliant Vidal; eschewing the waspish, vituperative tone that Vidal would resort to at his bitchiest, Baldwin seems always to manifest a certain gravitas regrettably lacking in (too) many of Vidal's most memorable broadsides.
Moreover, considering that the intellectual life of the U.S. is reasonably characterized as essayistic and novelistic rather than tome-bound (e.g., Emerson vs. Hegel, James vs. Kant, Franklin vs. Hume), one would have to say that Baldwin ranks amongst the greatest American intellectuals of the past 100 years, at least to the extent that we produce 'intellectuals' (as opposed to scholars) in the way that the older European cultures do.
'Genius' is an over-worked draft horse, and I'm not sure that the sled of literary talent can be properly affixed to the conceptual yoke in any case: taste, context, form, and subject matter are so variable that the label would seem stretched and twisted beyond any useful purpose. But if the term 'literary genius' can meaningfully be applied to a large body of essays, this is 700 pages of genius.
And that comparison is telling, because one quickly realizes Baldwin's superiority even to the brilliant Vidal; eschewing the waspish, vituperative tone that Vidal would resort to at his bitchiest, Baldwin seems always to manifest a certain gravitas regrettably lacking in (too) many of Vidal's most memorable broadsides.
Moreover, considering that the intellectual life of the U.S. is reasonably characterized as essayistic and novelistic rather than tome-bound (e.g., Emerson vs. Hegel, James vs. Kant, Franklin vs. Hume), one would have to say that Baldwin ranks amongst the greatest American intellectuals of the past 100 years, at least to the extent that we produce 'intellectuals' (as opposed to scholars) in the way that the older European cultures do.
'Genius' is an over-worked draft horse, and I'm not sure that the sled of literary talent can be properly affixed to the conceptual yoke in any case: taste, context, form, and subject matter are so variable that the label would seem stretched and twisted beyond any useful purpose. But if the term 'literary genius' can meaningfully be applied to a large body of essays, this is 700 pages of genius.
July 13, 2008
Baldwin's grimoire, his collected magnum opus, on dealing with America's number one problem.
September 3, 2017
I read this years ago, inspired to read again. Intelligent.
June 3, 2023
Baldwin's writing is ever and always five stars, but there's so many essays it's inevitable some didn't work for me, so 4.5 for the collection. Looking forward to proving myself wrong and upping it to five on a reread.
December 17, 2021
The problem with reading such a profound volume of work is that you can't do it justice in words. I wish I could describe to you the level of beauty and voice this collection has, but I can't. I honestly can't think anyone can. All I can do is recommend that you read it. Even more so, say not only is it good, but that it is important. Not only to be absorbed for the sake of your mind but also that of your soul. I can't describe it to you, but I will try.
The biggest problem I find with collections, especially those of the same author over a long period, is a varying level of quality. If you collect everything a writer has done, even an extremely talented one, you get the good along with the bad. Earlier works that don't hold up as well against later works that are more refined. Plus the occasional work that makes no sense, but was still published because it would make money. However, in this collection, I didn't find that to be the case. It's almost impossible to read anything by Baldwin and not come away with at least something profound. There is no good with the bad because it's all great. To say this is the gold standard of collections is an understatement.
I don't feel right picking a favorite, since everything in the collection is worth reading, but I do want to say that "The Fire Next Time" is by far the crown jewel of this collection. It may be one of Baldwin's most important nonfiction works but remains the hardest pill to swallow. I can't help but feel he didn't write it for his own time, but rather, saw where the country was headed, and wrote it for today. While I don't condone reading only one essay in this collection, if there was only one you would read multiple times, it would be Fire. In fact, everyone should read it before every school council meeting.
The weird part of my brain that feels it needs to complain about something says I need to say something about "No Name in the Street." It's overly long and tends to stray from the point on more than one occasion. Not Baldwin's best work. That being said, Baldwin's worst book is better than 90% of the stuff in publishing today.
In a more broad analysis, there's a great deal of beautifully written pain in these works. Baldwin's voice can be too easily dismissed as angry, but I feel that is too simple of an answer. Sure, there is anger, but I feel his voice is directed more at the worse world than it is at any particular group of people. A feeling that the world, or more accurately the people in it, can be better. Understanding that people can't solve any of the world's problems until they at least acknowledge the problems that lie within themselves. That's what I took away from it at least. And that might be this collection's greatest gift. That it's impossible to read and not walk away the same.
The biggest problem I find with collections, especially those of the same author over a long period, is a varying level of quality. If you collect everything a writer has done, even an extremely talented one, you get the good along with the bad. Earlier works that don't hold up as well against later works that are more refined. Plus the occasional work that makes no sense, but was still published because it would make money. However, in this collection, I didn't find that to be the case. It's almost impossible to read anything by Baldwin and not come away with at least something profound. There is no good with the bad because it's all great. To say this is the gold standard of collections is an understatement.
I don't feel right picking a favorite, since everything in the collection is worth reading, but I do want to say that "The Fire Next Time" is by far the crown jewel of this collection. It may be one of Baldwin's most important nonfiction works but remains the hardest pill to swallow. I can't help but feel he didn't write it for his own time, but rather, saw where the country was headed, and wrote it for today. While I don't condone reading only one essay in this collection, if there was only one you would read multiple times, it would be Fire. In fact, everyone should read it before every school council meeting.
The weird part of my brain that feels it needs to complain about something says I need to say something about "No Name in the Street." It's overly long and tends to stray from the point on more than one occasion. Not Baldwin's best work. That being said, Baldwin's worst book is better than 90% of the stuff in publishing today.
In a more broad analysis, there's a great deal of beautifully written pain in these works. Baldwin's voice can be too easily dismissed as angry, but I feel that is too simple of an answer. Sure, there is anger, but I feel his voice is directed more at the worse world than it is at any particular group of people. A feeling that the world, or more accurately the people in it, can be better. Understanding that people can't solve any of the world's problems until they at least acknowledge the problems that lie within themselves. That's what I took away from it at least. And that might be this collection's greatest gift. That it's impossible to read and not walk away the same.
August 5, 2007
Generally, I hate such statements, however, Baldwin is quite possibly the greatest essayist of the 20th century!
June 13, 2008
This book is amazing from cover to cover. Baldwin writes with style, perspective, many shifts in tone and message. His writing is potent and powerful. Let me stop drooling.
October 3, 2015
No writer like him, then or now.
April 9, 2022
Magisterial, rigorous, scathing, lyrical. Essential.
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May 7, 2023The Price of the Ticket
This is a big collection of James Baldwin essays and nonfiction from about 40 years or of writing. I tend to be a bigger fan of James Baldwin’s nonfiction more than his fiction in part because I think the poetry of his brain and language elevates his nonfiction in such a big way. In his fiction, it still works, but it’s less powerful for me.
Some of the not previously printed highlights include
“A Talk With Teachers” – In this essay, we see James Baldwin at his best as a kind of anti-Jeremiah. What I mean by this specifically is his ability to scold people, actually in fairly kind words, for not holding themselves up to impossible standards. James Baldwin was never a formal teacher, but he’s a teacher in many respects obviously. He also just has a clear sense about what teaching is and should be, a way for people to be aware of how to make society what society claims about itself.
“For Sweet Lorraine” – This is a James Baldwin introduction to a collective work by Lorraine Hansberry. What stands out here more than anything is the clear understanding that they were close friends, shared a real love and relationship with one another, and that James Baldwin has a deep respect for her work. I am perplexed by theater a lot of times, and James Baldwin is not, and not at all confused or perplexed by her influence on theater, which through “A Raisin in the Sun” he believes changed theater without question.
“Nothing Personal” – A meditation on American media culture and how it often present de-vitalized versions of life, and how this translates to American existence and the ways in which this intersects with blackness.
“The Dangerous Road Before Martin Luther King” – An earlier essay about the path that stands before MLK. This is from the early 1960s and James Baldwin has a clear and unvarnished respect for MLK. He is looking forward to the next several years at where he is going. This is a perfectly contrasted essay to later ones that unfortunately have to look back at MLK.
“Negroes are anti-Semitic because they’re anti-White” – The most vexing essay in this collection because it’s the one that most has to be dealt with before moving on. The provocative title slightly undercuts the more thoughtful essay that it initiates. The essay is not about a stance of anti-Semitism among African-Americans, but instead a recognition of the ways that Jews in America function like a lot of other immigrant groups when it comes to relations with Black Americans, where a desire to assimilate takes precedent over compassion. The anti-Semitism that Baldwin talks about her is an immediate reaction to the people in their line of sight of Black Americans and less about a conscientious orientation. That doesn’t mean that the two don’t blend together at times.
” A Report from Occupied Territory” – A deeply sad look at Blackness in America using the language of decolonialism and other resistance language.
“Here there be Dragons” – While his novels deal with it, Baldwin doesn’t spend a ton of space in his nonfiction writing about sexuality and gender. Here’s a more targeted essay about those topics, as opposed to the more obliques discussions in other essays.
Notes of a Native Son
The title essay of this collection tries to reckon with James Baldwin’s sense of who his father was, specifically in his off-putting and near religious obsession. It’s an essay that also speaks to a universal truth: everybody’s dad is the most alien and strange creature they know; except for everyone else’s dad.
The other essays that really stand out in this collection include his reviews of the movies Carmen Jones and Porgy Bess, both of which were directed by Otto Preminger, and do represent a kind of transgressive attempt to put Blackness on the screen in real ways. Baldwin can’t help but feel that missing the mark is almost worse than not doing it in the first place in both movies the raw sexuality of the source materials are sanitized and desexualized to the point of offensive nonexistence. This is partly a directorial issue, as how could Preminger possibly achieve this? But also an issue with the sanitized performances by attractive, but desexed actors. There’s plenty of good reason why it happened, but no justification.
The essays: “Stranger in the Village,” “Equal in Paris,” and “A Question of Identity” circulate around two ideas primarily as James Baldwin is living in Paris. The first question is: how does it feel to be treated as Black, outside of the American context? And, how does it feel to be treated as an American, outside the context of American Blackness? The answers are complex.
The other reviews in this book include a rundown of the weak-sauce success of Ross Lockridge’s Raintree County, a mostly forgotten novel now, that set out to be a Great American Novel (TM). It was hugely successful, but almost immediately after Lockridge’s dies by suicide, something that Baldwin was forced to add an epilogue about in his review.
The other review that hugely stands out is “Many Thousands Gone” Baldwin’s initial review of Richard Wright’s Native Son, a novel Baldwin finds truly vexing (and I think rightly so).
For me, the most important essay in this collection remains “Everybody’s Protest Novel” which tackles the artlessness of protest writing, especially Harriet Beecher Stowe, but also Richard Wright. I found myself reinvigorated by the essay which delves into the awfulness of art that is trying to serve a social goal and purpose rather than be art. I won’t get into details, but needless to say, we still have some of that around. One of my bugbears of current tv, to speak of NOT ART, is when 2022 language crops up into shows about older times. It’s a weird anachronistic occurrence, which I could overlook if it weren’t there to serve a political purpose that strips away the viewing experience.
Nobody Knows My Name – Some highlights:
“Faulkner and Desegregation” – This essay is a response to Faulkner’s famous remarks about “Wait”(ing) for reforms to take effect. A later essay that Baldwin writes says that waiting is useless because one only has one life to live. It’s interesting here because while I have no fault whatsoever with Baldwin frustration with Faulkner, he is dealing with a drunk-addled Faulkner of the 1950s and not the much more sympathetic and sharp Faulkner of the early novels. I think that Baldwin often allows his new sentiment to color his interpretation of the past writing. This is a fair response, but not always a honest reading.
“In Search of a Majority” – In which Baldwin looks at the concept of the majority in light of a lot of talk about “minority rights”.
“The Male Prison” – A response to late Andre Gide novels in which the French writer is reckoning with his own closeted sense of being.
“Notes for a Hypothetical Novel” – I don’t really like when Baldwin talks about being a writer because he’s universalizes his own experience in an almost imperious way that is off putting.
“Alas, Poor Richard”- A reflective essay on the death of Richard Wright, their shared history, their shared ex-pat status, and Baldwin’s almost guilt at savaging Native Son. It’s a longing essay more than anything.
“The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy” – A response to Norman Mailer, partly to the essay “The White Negro” in which Mailer discusses the coming understanding that the world doesn’t give a shot about him, something that Baldwin thinks that only a white man of 30 could write (with the idea that every Black man would already know this innately) but also to the perplexing reaction to Norman Mailer’s Advertisements for Myself, in which his impressions of several contemporary writers are concerned, including Baldwin. Baldwin is reacting specifically to the question of why someone he considers a close friend would use a book to assess his writing without talking to him about it first.
The Fire Next Time – You already know this one I assume. The book is broken into two essays, one short and one long. The short essay is a direct letter to a nephew of James Baldwin and looks at the ways in which white supremacy is entrenched in wider culture. The second, longer essay is probably the best, most distilled description of systemic racism that we have, balancing content with accessibility. While he focuses heavily throughout on the role that the protestant church helped to usher in the structural racism and how the Nation of Islam is responding to it (and this whole section is clearly contained within a context that I fear is lost to time somewhat).
No Name in the Street – So many of James Baldwin’s nonfiction works are sermons. The Fire Next Time is the most direct version of this, but that was rooted in a discussion of religion, and as I’ve already mentioned works as a kind of Jeremiad, something Baldwin ends up saying in another essay. This book length essay, which is about 1.5 times as long is a more directly political sermon on American racism. This is a post assassination of MLK book and also, importantly post civil rights. One of the effects of the civil rights movement is that it’s relative success was reinscribed as total success as a way to further damage Black people. What I mean by this was the the civil rights movement was falsely (by white people) taken as total victory as a way to close the conversation. So the rise of the Black Panthers and BLA and then the move toward internalizing racial oppression, moving toward the war on drugs, was one of the next moves of white supremacy. So this sermon is much more bleak and angry as a consequence. Baldwin warns readers that to speak of violence is not to condone it, but in the law and order era of American politics, violence is a very popular (and still is) scapegoat for racial oppression.
The Devil Finds Work – Even though it’s much more specific and targeted, and maybe also because it was a new read for me, I enjoyed this long essay the most from the rest of the collection. Here Baldwin begins by thinking about some of his early experiences with film. It begins with a memoir-like reading of a Joan Crawford film, discusses popular films over the next 40 years and then lands of a reading of a recent film. The core of the book is his look at several specific films: The Defiant Ones, Look Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, and The Exorcist. The last one kind of comes out of nowhere, and the criticism is less incisive than the others, but does offer an interesting meditation. What ties the firs three together of course is both the roles played by Sydney Poitier, but also the films’ subjects and their specific discussions of race. The widest way to describe Baldwin’s criticism is that they offer race fantasies to white audiences, not unlike Birth of a Nation, but in reverse. A constant thread for Baldwin is about American’s refusal to let themselves see the world and see themselves. He believes that most Americans live in a fantasy world constructed in such a way to support their mostly childlike view of themselves, the country, and morality. So the three films function as fantasy-making for the well-meaning white audience. As is true in other Baldwin film essays where Black actors play significant roles, Baldwin laments the waster talent and the waster opportunity to explore complexity for the sake or reassuring platitudes.
This is a big collection of James Baldwin essays and nonfiction from about 40 years or of writing. I tend to be a bigger fan of James Baldwin’s nonfiction more than his fiction in part because I think the poetry of his brain and language elevates his nonfiction in such a big way. In his fiction, it still works, but it’s less powerful for me.
Some of the not previously printed highlights include
“A Talk With Teachers” – In this essay, we see James Baldwin at his best as a kind of anti-Jeremiah. What I mean by this specifically is his ability to scold people, actually in fairly kind words, for not holding themselves up to impossible standards. James Baldwin was never a formal teacher, but he’s a teacher in many respects obviously. He also just has a clear sense about what teaching is and should be, a way for people to be aware of how to make society what society claims about itself.
“For Sweet Lorraine” – This is a James Baldwin introduction to a collective work by Lorraine Hansberry. What stands out here more than anything is the clear understanding that they were close friends, shared a real love and relationship with one another, and that James Baldwin has a deep respect for her work. I am perplexed by theater a lot of times, and James Baldwin is not, and not at all confused or perplexed by her influence on theater, which through “A Raisin in the Sun” he believes changed theater without question.
“Nothing Personal” – A meditation on American media culture and how it often present de-vitalized versions of life, and how this translates to American existence and the ways in which this intersects with blackness.
“The Dangerous Road Before Martin Luther King” – An earlier essay about the path that stands before MLK. This is from the early 1960s and James Baldwin has a clear and unvarnished respect for MLK. He is looking forward to the next several years at where he is going. This is a perfectly contrasted essay to later ones that unfortunately have to look back at MLK.
“Negroes are anti-Semitic because they’re anti-White” – The most vexing essay in this collection because it’s the one that most has to be dealt with before moving on. The provocative title slightly undercuts the more thoughtful essay that it initiates. The essay is not about a stance of anti-Semitism among African-Americans, but instead a recognition of the ways that Jews in America function like a lot of other immigrant groups when it comes to relations with Black Americans, where a desire to assimilate takes precedent over compassion. The anti-Semitism that Baldwin talks about her is an immediate reaction to the people in their line of sight of Black Americans and less about a conscientious orientation. That doesn’t mean that the two don’t blend together at times.
” A Report from Occupied Territory” – A deeply sad look at Blackness in America using the language of decolonialism and other resistance language.
“Here there be Dragons” – While his novels deal with it, Baldwin doesn’t spend a ton of space in his nonfiction writing about sexuality and gender. Here’s a more targeted essay about those topics, as opposed to the more obliques discussions in other essays.
Notes of a Native Son
The title essay of this collection tries to reckon with James Baldwin’s sense of who his father was, specifically in his off-putting and near religious obsession. It’s an essay that also speaks to a universal truth: everybody’s dad is the most alien and strange creature they know; except for everyone else’s dad.
The other essays that really stand out in this collection include his reviews of the movies Carmen Jones and Porgy Bess, both of which were directed by Otto Preminger, and do represent a kind of transgressive attempt to put Blackness on the screen in real ways. Baldwin can’t help but feel that missing the mark is almost worse than not doing it in the first place in both movies the raw sexuality of the source materials are sanitized and desexualized to the point of offensive nonexistence. This is partly a directorial issue, as how could Preminger possibly achieve this? But also an issue with the sanitized performances by attractive, but desexed actors. There’s plenty of good reason why it happened, but no justification.
The essays: “Stranger in the Village,” “Equal in Paris,” and “A Question of Identity” circulate around two ideas primarily as James Baldwin is living in Paris. The first question is: how does it feel to be treated as Black, outside of the American context? And, how does it feel to be treated as an American, outside the context of American Blackness? The answers are complex.
The other reviews in this book include a rundown of the weak-sauce success of Ross Lockridge’s Raintree County, a mostly forgotten novel now, that set out to be a Great American Novel (TM). It was hugely successful, but almost immediately after Lockridge’s dies by suicide, something that Baldwin was forced to add an epilogue about in his review.
The other review that hugely stands out is “Many Thousands Gone” Baldwin’s initial review of Richard Wright’s Native Son, a novel Baldwin finds truly vexing (and I think rightly so).
For me, the most important essay in this collection remains “Everybody’s Protest Novel” which tackles the artlessness of protest writing, especially Harriet Beecher Stowe, but also Richard Wright. I found myself reinvigorated by the essay which delves into the awfulness of art that is trying to serve a social goal and purpose rather than be art. I won’t get into details, but needless to say, we still have some of that around. One of my bugbears of current tv, to speak of NOT ART, is when 2022 language crops up into shows about older times. It’s a weird anachronistic occurrence, which I could overlook if it weren’t there to serve a political purpose that strips away the viewing experience.
Nobody Knows My Name – Some highlights:
“Faulkner and Desegregation” – This essay is a response to Faulkner’s famous remarks about “Wait”(ing) for reforms to take effect. A later essay that Baldwin writes says that waiting is useless because one only has one life to live. It’s interesting here because while I have no fault whatsoever with Baldwin frustration with Faulkner, he is dealing with a drunk-addled Faulkner of the 1950s and not the much more sympathetic and sharp Faulkner of the early novels. I think that Baldwin often allows his new sentiment to color his interpretation of the past writing. This is a fair response, but not always a honest reading.
“In Search of a Majority” – In which Baldwin looks at the concept of the majority in light of a lot of talk about “minority rights”.
“The Male Prison” – A response to late Andre Gide novels in which the French writer is reckoning with his own closeted sense of being.
“Notes for a Hypothetical Novel” – I don’t really like when Baldwin talks about being a writer because he’s universalizes his own experience in an almost imperious way that is off putting.
“Alas, Poor Richard”- A reflective essay on the death of Richard Wright, their shared history, their shared ex-pat status, and Baldwin’s almost guilt at savaging Native Son. It’s a longing essay more than anything.
“The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy” – A response to Norman Mailer, partly to the essay “The White Negro” in which Mailer discusses the coming understanding that the world doesn’t give a shot about him, something that Baldwin thinks that only a white man of 30 could write (with the idea that every Black man would already know this innately) but also to the perplexing reaction to Norman Mailer’s Advertisements for Myself, in which his impressions of several contemporary writers are concerned, including Baldwin. Baldwin is reacting specifically to the question of why someone he considers a close friend would use a book to assess his writing without talking to him about it first.
The Fire Next Time – You already know this one I assume. The book is broken into two essays, one short and one long. The short essay is a direct letter to a nephew of James Baldwin and looks at the ways in which white supremacy is entrenched in wider culture. The second, longer essay is probably the best, most distilled description of systemic racism that we have, balancing content with accessibility. While he focuses heavily throughout on the role that the protestant church helped to usher in the structural racism and how the Nation of Islam is responding to it (and this whole section is clearly contained within a context that I fear is lost to time somewhat).
No Name in the Street – So many of James Baldwin’s nonfiction works are sermons. The Fire Next Time is the most direct version of this, but that was rooted in a discussion of religion, and as I’ve already mentioned works as a kind of Jeremiad, something Baldwin ends up saying in another essay. This book length essay, which is about 1.5 times as long is a more directly political sermon on American racism. This is a post assassination of MLK book and also, importantly post civil rights. One of the effects of the civil rights movement is that it’s relative success was reinscribed as total success as a way to further damage Black people. What I mean by this was the the civil rights movement was falsely (by white people) taken as total victory as a way to close the conversation. So the rise of the Black Panthers and BLA and then the move toward internalizing racial oppression, moving toward the war on drugs, was one of the next moves of white supremacy. So this sermon is much more bleak and angry as a consequence. Baldwin warns readers that to speak of violence is not to condone it, but in the law and order era of American politics, violence is a very popular (and still is) scapegoat for racial oppression.
The Devil Finds Work – Even though it’s much more specific and targeted, and maybe also because it was a new read for me, I enjoyed this long essay the most from the rest of the collection. Here Baldwin begins by thinking about some of his early experiences with film. It begins with a memoir-like reading of a Joan Crawford film, discusses popular films over the next 40 years and then lands of a reading of a recent film. The core of the book is his look at several specific films: The Defiant Ones, Look Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, and The Exorcist. The last one kind of comes out of nowhere, and the criticism is less incisive than the others, but does offer an interesting meditation. What ties the firs three together of course is both the roles played by Sydney Poitier, but also the films’ subjects and their specific discussions of race. The widest way to describe Baldwin’s criticism is that they offer race fantasies to white audiences, not unlike Birth of a Nation, but in reverse. A constant thread for Baldwin is about American’s refusal to let themselves see the world and see themselves. He believes that most Americans live in a fantasy world constructed in such a way to support their mostly childlike view of themselves, the country, and morality. So the three films function as fantasy-making for the well-meaning white audience. As is true in other Baldwin film essays where Black actors play significant roles, Baldwin laments the waster talent and the waster opportunity to explore complexity for the sake or reassuring platitudes.
May 22, 2025
This dense tome took forever to get through; but it was a good type of forever. Both deserving of and requiring a re-read!
February 13, 2023
I'm FINALLY finished with this book! What can I say? James Baldwin does not disappoint.
Remarkable essays (personally): The Discovery of What It Means to be an American, The Male Prison, Nobody Knows My Name, In Search of a Majority, A Fly in Buttermilk, A Talk to Teachers, Nothing Personal, White Racism or World Community?, and Here Be Dragons.
Remarkable essays (personally): The Discovery of What It Means to be an American, The Male Prison, Nobody Knows My Name, In Search of a Majority, A Fly in Buttermilk, A Talk to Teachers, Nothing Personal, White Racism or World Community?, and Here Be Dragons.
October 27, 2025
Wow that was incredible. Before this book I was mainly familiar with his fictional work and that was already really good to me. But this really made me laud him as one of my favorite writers without a doubt. My favorite thing about him is that he doesn’t seem to mince words and is very direct. I’m in favor of how he describes America as a country lost within its own delusion and suffering for it. He implores Black Americans not to subscribe to the white myth that you are beneath or less than, just because they spread hatred and violence out of fear of losing their position in a country they stole from someone else. A delusion that of course still exists today as some truly believe a civilized country is a country dominated by white people. Yet still shy away from the notion of white supremacy or even worse, admit to seeing no issue with it.
James’ journey to Europe is also alluring yet terrifying as he explains the hopes and fears I think about when going to Europe. A freedom away from the states, only to realize racism follows and so does your reality soon enough. But still, a change of scenery can definitely increase your chances of finding a certain community you yearn to find. As many American writers (and also soldiers off the GI Bill) found themselves in Europe at that time. His experiences of being in Switzerland in a village where they’ve legit never seen a black person, let alone a black American made me squirm to be honest. It can be tough to accept the notion that someone has never seen something like you, so they treat you as some sort of alien instead of a person they just haven’t seen. His telling of being arrested in France during his first year there for taking bedsheets from a different hotel is a harrowing experience. Jail in a different country where you don’t speak the language is a nightmare enhanced. But he always seemed to find his way through.
Coming back from France in the mid 50s he found himself on assignment in the south to find out more about the civil rights movement. Talking to black students going to recently desegregated schools where they dealt with mobs and people spitting on them and screaming obscenities. He also went to FAMU to discuss student sit ins at the time with the younger generation. And also knew various civil rights luminaries ranging from Malcolm X, MLK, Huey Newton, Medgar Evers and more. It’s one thing to see the atrocities of the 60s unfold in real time in general. But it’s another to see these black men you’ve come to know, murdered in cold blood for trying to make a change in a country that desperately needed it. No matter the era it’s tough to breakthrough as a voice, and stay there for years on end without backlash. Either things don’t change and it’s bad. Or they do change and it’s still bad. It’s hard for one to think there’s a way you can win at that game.
Many more stories, criticisms, and thought provoking writing was inside this giant book. Reviews of Roots, Raisin In The Sun, Guess Who’s coming to dinner or even Billie Holidays biopic starring Diana Ross. Him admitting the difficulty of writing a book vs a play. His telling of how he ALMOST wrote the screenplay for a Malcolm X movie but the studio changed things too much. His religious upbringing and ultimate religious departure. His relationship with his siblings and his mother and also the tumultuous relationship with his father. So much can be taken from this and I would love to reread more of these essays as time goes on. For me James Baldwin is an ever lasting inspiration.
James’ journey to Europe is also alluring yet terrifying as he explains the hopes and fears I think about when going to Europe. A freedom away from the states, only to realize racism follows and so does your reality soon enough. But still, a change of scenery can definitely increase your chances of finding a certain community you yearn to find. As many American writers (and also soldiers off the GI Bill) found themselves in Europe at that time. His experiences of being in Switzerland in a village where they’ve legit never seen a black person, let alone a black American made me squirm to be honest. It can be tough to accept the notion that someone has never seen something like you, so they treat you as some sort of alien instead of a person they just haven’t seen. His telling of being arrested in France during his first year there for taking bedsheets from a different hotel is a harrowing experience. Jail in a different country where you don’t speak the language is a nightmare enhanced. But he always seemed to find his way through.
Coming back from France in the mid 50s he found himself on assignment in the south to find out more about the civil rights movement. Talking to black students going to recently desegregated schools where they dealt with mobs and people spitting on them and screaming obscenities. He also went to FAMU to discuss student sit ins at the time with the younger generation. And also knew various civil rights luminaries ranging from Malcolm X, MLK, Huey Newton, Medgar Evers and more. It’s one thing to see the atrocities of the 60s unfold in real time in general. But it’s another to see these black men you’ve come to know, murdered in cold blood for trying to make a change in a country that desperately needed it. No matter the era it’s tough to breakthrough as a voice, and stay there for years on end without backlash. Either things don’t change and it’s bad. Or they do change and it’s still bad. It’s hard for one to think there’s a way you can win at that game.
Many more stories, criticisms, and thought provoking writing was inside this giant book. Reviews of Roots, Raisin In The Sun, Guess Who’s coming to dinner or even Billie Holidays biopic starring Diana Ross. Him admitting the difficulty of writing a book vs a play. His telling of how he ALMOST wrote the screenplay for a Malcolm X movie but the studio changed things too much. His religious upbringing and ultimate religious departure. His relationship with his siblings and his mother and also the tumultuous relationship with his father. So much can be taken from this and I would love to reread more of these essays as time goes on. For me James Baldwin is an ever lasting inspiration.
January 9, 2015
This incredibly comprehensive collection of essays is thought-provoking and relevant even decades after the essays were written. Of this mammoth collection, the essays that spoke most powerfully to me were "A Talk to Teachers," "If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?" and "The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American." This is a fantastic resource to read alongside Baldwin's fiction and his picture book.
November 9, 2012
I've seen the documentary with the same title and it gives some background on what mindsets Baldwin was in during these writings. What can you really say about the inner thoughts of an intellectual such as Baldwin? Brilliant.
May 10, 2016
This is a collection of essays written between 1948 and 1985 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, but James Baldwin's words are equally relevant today. "The Fire Next Time" was the most powerful essay in the collection, which I believe that everyone, everywhere should read.
July 29, 2018
A sacred text of political and artistic criticism.
James Baldwin's writing was often verbose, which also seemed to be his regular way of speaking, but it was verbose with scalding, searing truths.
Worth buying for deep thinkers and shameless truth-seekers.
James Baldwin's writing was often verbose, which also seemed to be his regular way of speaking, but it was verbose with scalding, searing truths.
Worth buying for deep thinkers and shameless truth-seekers.
June 19, 2021
This book is very good.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 28, 2025
An essential collection of James Baldwin essays! Really great to read essays I’ve seen referenced in numerous other books by various authors.
December 11, 2024
Baldwin’s writing is exemplary, and he doesn’t pull any punches with the content of the essays. He writes about his formative years, his rocky relationship with his father, his sexuality, and race, but overall, the essays focus on identity: What it is to be a Black American; what is an American. He sees American history as the history of Black Americans. His critiques are harsh, bleak, and potentially hopeful. Sometimes.
“The story of the Negro in America is the story of America—or, more precisely, it is the story of Americans. It is not a pretty story: the story of a people is never very pretty.” (p. 65, “Many Thousands Gone,” 1951)
His essays, particularly the ones about his time in France, are revealing for how his time overseas gave Baldwin the perspective he needed to explore identity and being an American.
“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” (p. 81, “Stranger in the Village,” 1953)
In Paris, Baldwin discovers a unifying experience: Americans, regardless of their color, experience the same feeling of not feeling at home in Europe and each are as “American as any Texas GI.”
Many of his observations are as appropriate today as they were when written 60+ years ago. In 1960, writing about his trip to Tallahassee to visit civil rights workers, Baldwin comments about the historical perspective these students glimpse. It’s a perspective “in a country that has told itself so many lies about its history, that, in sober fact, has yet to excavate its history from the rubble of romance.” (p. 222, “They Can’t Turn Back,” 1960). To this reader, sadly, strong statements like this make this collection of essays a candidate for banning by the anti-woke movement.
There are, for this reader, two essays that stand out rating at least 5 stars each. If you read just one essay in this book, it should be “No Name in the Street,” the longest essay in this collection. It’s a far reaching, sometimes wrenching, essay that encompasses all the themes he covers in the majority of his essays.
The second is “The Devil Finds Work.” In this essay, Baldwin uses reviews of quite a few movies to critique not just Hollywood, but to also reflect on color race. It is a creative, unique, and revealing perspective.
“The story of the Negro in America is the story of America—or, more precisely, it is the story of Americans. It is not a pretty story: the story of a people is never very pretty.” (p. 65, “Many Thousands Gone,” 1951)
His essays, particularly the ones about his time in France, are revealing for how his time overseas gave Baldwin the perspective he needed to explore identity and being an American.
“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” (p. 81, “Stranger in the Village,” 1953)
In Paris, Baldwin discovers a unifying experience: Americans, regardless of their color, experience the same feeling of not feeling at home in Europe and each are as “American as any Texas GI.”
Many of his observations are as appropriate today as they were when written 60+ years ago. In 1960, writing about his trip to Tallahassee to visit civil rights workers, Baldwin comments about the historical perspective these students glimpse. It’s a perspective “in a country that has told itself so many lies about its history, that, in sober fact, has yet to excavate its history from the rubble of romance.” (p. 222, “They Can’t Turn Back,” 1960). To this reader, sadly, strong statements like this make this collection of essays a candidate for banning by the anti-woke movement.
There are, for this reader, two essays that stand out rating at least 5 stars each. If you read just one essay in this book, it should be “No Name in the Street,” the longest essay in this collection. It’s a far reaching, sometimes wrenching, essay that encompasses all the themes he covers in the majority of his essays.
The second is “The Devil Finds Work.” In this essay, Baldwin uses reviews of quite a few movies to critique not just Hollywood, but to also reflect on color race. It is a creative, unique, and revealing perspective.
November 3, 2020
What an exceptionally enraging book. Baldwin is ever at his best being Baldwin. Intelligent, passionate, smart, concise, lyrical, expansive, angry, honest, and raw. I LOVE reading his works, but they make me so mad and sad, simultaneously.
Baldwin has myriad ways of saying one basic thing: Simply put, there are two worlds, one for White (Supremacist) People, and one for Black People. And until we can bring those two worlds together and make one better one, for all people, the only real suffering will continue in the world for Black People, but White (Supremacist) People will fare barely better.
40 years (or more) since many of these pieces were penned, and almost nothing has changed for the Black People in the US, or the world. White (Supremacist) "Christians" still put power before The Word. The US Government still denies Black people many of the rights White (Supremacist) People have granted by birth, AND still actively fights when Black People attempt to get those rights accorded to themselves (witness the fire-hosing, attack dogs, tear gas, and police beatings of the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's 00's, 10's, 20's...). Until White (Supremacist) America fesses up to the long-standing effects/affects of slavery and its subsequent neo-slavery eras (Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Lynching Parties, Desegregation...) nothing will improve. Until White (Supremacist) America is as angry as Black people about the massive injustices of the world's governments, institutions, police forces, capitalist enterprises, and churches (to name but a few...) nothing will change. Baldwin knew this, and never wavered from brining it to the attention of anyone who would listen. He is an essential intellectual, a beautiful writer, and, more importantly, an amazing human being.
Baldwin has myriad ways of saying one basic thing: Simply put, there are two worlds, one for White (Supremacist) People, and one for Black People. And until we can bring those two worlds together and make one better one, for all people, the only real suffering will continue in the world for Black People, but White (Supremacist) People will fare barely better.
40 years (or more) since many of these pieces were penned, and almost nothing has changed for the Black People in the US, or the world. White (Supremacist) "Christians" still put power before The Word. The US Government still denies Black people many of the rights White (Supremacist) People have granted by birth, AND still actively fights when Black People attempt to get those rights accorded to themselves (witness the fire-hosing, attack dogs, tear gas, and police beatings of the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's 00's, 10's, 20's...). Until White (Supremacist) America fesses up to the long-standing effects/affects of slavery and its subsequent neo-slavery eras (Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Lynching Parties, Desegregation...) nothing will improve. Until White (Supremacist) America is as angry as Black people about the massive injustices of the world's governments, institutions, police forces, capitalist enterprises, and churches (to name but a few...) nothing will change. Baldwin knew this, and never wavered from brining it to the attention of anyone who would listen. He is an essential intellectual, a beautiful writer, and, more importantly, an amazing human being.
March 6, 2025
James Baldwin's The Price of the Ticket is both a mirror and a map for our current moment in American history. It is, on one hand, profoundly sad that the issues Baldwin wrote about—racism, identity, and justice—remain painfully relevant today. On the other hand, there is something invigorating about having Baldwin's voice as a guide through these times, illuminating the complexities of race, sexuality, and societal hypocrisy with unflinching clarity.
Baldwin's analysis of what it means to be Black in America, as well as his reflections on being Black in France, resonated deeply with me. His transatlantic perspective exposes the pervasiveness of racism while also revealing the nuances of identity in different cultural contexts. This duality sharpens his critique of a society that, by dehumanizing Black people, ultimately dehumanizes itself. Baldwin’s assertion that racism harms not only its victims but also its perpetrators—and indeed, all of society—feels especially urgent today.
Equally powerful is Baldwin's exploration of his own identity as a gay man. It is inspiring to witness the evolution of his self-acceptance throughout the essays, revealing a courage that transcends even the most brutal societal rejections. His reflections on art, theater, and literature further showcase his brilliance as a social commentator. Baldwin's ability to dissect the human condition through the lens of culture and politics makes this collection a masterclass in both criticism and compassion.
The Price of the Ticket is more than a collection of essays; it is a call to examine the soul of a nation. Baldwin’s words continue to challenge us to confront our history honestly and to imagine a future defined by justice and true equality.
Baldwin's analysis of what it means to be Black in America, as well as his reflections on being Black in France, resonated deeply with me. His transatlantic perspective exposes the pervasiveness of racism while also revealing the nuances of identity in different cultural contexts. This duality sharpens his critique of a society that, by dehumanizing Black people, ultimately dehumanizes itself. Baldwin’s assertion that racism harms not only its victims but also its perpetrators—and indeed, all of society—feels especially urgent today.
Equally powerful is Baldwin's exploration of his own identity as a gay man. It is inspiring to witness the evolution of his self-acceptance throughout the essays, revealing a courage that transcends even the most brutal societal rejections. His reflections on art, theater, and literature further showcase his brilliance as a social commentator. Baldwin's ability to dissect the human condition through the lens of culture and politics makes this collection a masterclass in both criticism and compassion.
The Price of the Ticket is more than a collection of essays; it is a call to examine the soul of a nation. Baldwin’s words continue to challenge us to confront our history honestly and to imagine a future defined by justice and true equality.
September 4, 2025
Finally took the time to read a few of James Baldwin's essays. Powerful and brutally honest critiques of the complexities of American society, politics and race. I first came across Baldwin from a quote about the importance of art. It was from an interview in Life magazine. He reminds us that we all believe that we are facing heartbreak alone, but he reminds us that:
"It was Dostoyevski and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other proper. An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are."
That is not in this volume, but there is an excellent 1962 essay "The Creative Process" in which he elaborates on this theme. I read several other essays and have a much greater appreciation of Baldwin.
"It was Dostoyevski and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other proper. An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are."
That is not in this volume, but there is an excellent 1962 essay "The Creative Process" in which he elaborates on this theme. I read several other essays and have a much greater appreciation of Baldwin.
October 19, 2019
I can't say I read this entire book. This is a wide collection of essays written by James Baldwin. It's not a book you read like a story, but it's a resource, a book you read piece by piece over a long period of time. I am overdue at the library for this book. So it must be returned. I wanted to buy this book for the reason it takes times to read and study, but the price was way too high. Any person interested in the works of James Baldwin should read this. As I read more and watch videoes of his interactions with other writers/poets there are more questions I have about his views and how they influence women. Great read.
December 12, 2025
Baldwin's fiction is good, powerful, and meaningful; but his nonfiction carries an extra punch. Some of these pieces could be considered "period" pieces, like his essay about the road ahead for MLK Jr. Even those, however, still apply and echo into today. Not much has changed, it would seem, at least not enough for these insightful words to lose their weight.
Baldwin doesn't just point his finger to racism but unveils the why, several layers deep. His later work, especially, focuses on the spiritual dread and consequences of racism, white and black.
All throughout, there's a metaphorical fist raised in the air to never give up, never give in.
Baldwin doesn't just point his finger to racism but unveils the why, several layers deep. His later work, especially, focuses on the spiritual dread and consequences of racism, white and black.
All throughout, there's a metaphorical fist raised in the air to never give up, never give in.
Want to read
May 16, 2025Table of Contents:
Introduction: The Price of the Ticket
The Harlem Ghetto
Lockridge: "The American Myth"
Journey to Atlanta
Everybody's Protest Novel
Encounter on the Seine: Black Meets Brown
Princes and Powers
Many Thousands Gone
Stranger in the Village
A Question of Identity
The Male Prison
Carmen Jones: The Dark Is Light Enough
Equal in Paris
Notes of a Native Son
Faulkner and Desegregation
The Crusade of Indignation
A Fly in Buttermilk
The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American
On Catfish Row
Nobody Knows My Name
The Northern Protestant
Fifth Avenue, Uptown
They Can't Turn Back
In Search of a Majority
Notes for a Hypothetical Novel
The Dangerous Road Before Martin Luther King
East River, Downtown
Alas, Poor Richard
The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy
The New Lost Generation
The Creative Process
Color
A Talk to Teachers
The Fire Next Time
Nothing Personal
Words of a Native Son
The American Dream and the American Negro
White Man's Guilt
A Report from Occupied Territory
Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White
White Racism or World Community?
Sweet Lorraine
No Name in the Street
A Review Of Roots
The Devil Finds Work
An Open Letter to Mr. Carter
Every Good-Bye Ain't Gone
If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?
An Open Letter to the Born Again
Dark Days
Notes on the House of Bondage
Here Be Dragons
Left off about to read: They can’t turn back.
Some notes: Turns out I’ve read many of these essays in Notes of a Native Son but most have been good so I don’t at all mind re-reading them
Intro thru page 37 all good articles. Even his early work displays incredible talent and the style Baldwin will hone. Plus his early pieces have rare drops of humor that aren’t employed much later.
Everybody’s protest novel: this one over-reached, was hard to follow, incomprehensible
Stranger in the village: good
A question of identity: maybe I read this too tired, but his usual complex style didn’t work for me and I wanted plainer, direct writing for this piece
The male prison: written 1954 it’s the most closeted piece I’ve read by Baldwin
Carmen Jones: funny and appropriately biting sarcasm (I assume, I haven’t seen the film)
Fly in Buttermilk: good snapshot of the early integration moment
5th Ave: excellent
Introduction: The Price of the Ticket
The Harlem Ghetto
Lockridge: "The American Myth"
Journey to Atlanta
Everybody's Protest Novel
Encounter on the Seine: Black Meets Brown
Princes and Powers
Many Thousands Gone
Stranger in the Village
A Question of Identity
The Male Prison
Carmen Jones: The Dark Is Light Enough
Equal in Paris
Notes of a Native Son
Faulkner and Desegregation
The Crusade of Indignation
A Fly in Buttermilk
The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American
On Catfish Row
Nobody Knows My Name
The Northern Protestant
Fifth Avenue, Uptown
They Can't Turn Back
In Search of a Majority
Notes for a Hypothetical Novel
The Dangerous Road Before Martin Luther King
East River, Downtown
Alas, Poor Richard
The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy
The New Lost Generation
The Creative Process
Color
A Talk to Teachers
The Fire Next Time
Nothing Personal
Words of a Native Son
The American Dream and the American Negro
White Man's Guilt
A Report from Occupied Territory
Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White
White Racism or World Community?
Sweet Lorraine
No Name in the Street
A Review Of Roots
The Devil Finds Work
An Open Letter to Mr. Carter
Every Good-Bye Ain't Gone
If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?
An Open Letter to the Born Again
Dark Days
Notes on the House of Bondage
Here Be Dragons
Left off about to read: They can’t turn back.
Some notes: Turns out I’ve read many of these essays in Notes of a Native Son but most have been good so I don’t at all mind re-reading them
Intro thru page 37 all good articles. Even his early work displays incredible talent and the style Baldwin will hone. Plus his early pieces have rare drops of humor that aren’t employed much later.
Everybody’s protest novel: this one over-reached, was hard to follow, incomprehensible
Stranger in the village: good
A question of identity: maybe I read this too tired, but his usual complex style didn’t work for me and I wanted plainer, direct writing for this piece
The male prison: written 1954 it’s the most closeted piece I’ve read by Baldwin
Carmen Jones: funny and appropriately biting sarcasm (I assume, I haven’t seen the film)
Fly in Buttermilk: good snapshot of the early integration moment
5th Ave: excellent
April 23, 2023
This was a great collection that showcased Baldwin's constant commitment to justice and equality. His essays and speeches remain as relevant today as they were when they were first written. They also serve as an important reminder of the ongoing struggle for civil rights and social justice in America.
In addition to essays and speeches, the collection includes interviews with Baldwin, in which he reflects on his life, work, and beliefs.
10/10 would recommend it.
In addition to essays and speeches, the collection includes interviews with Baldwin, in which he reflects on his life, work, and beliefs.
10/10 would recommend it.
August 23, 2019
I was a precocious teen, and apparently I first read James Baldwin when I was 13 years old. I'm surprised I found this at my local library and was interested, but at age 13, I was first getting my political consciousness, so I guess it makes sense. I've since gone on to read (and love) more by Baldwin.
October 21, 2021
Once again, I am overwhelmed by the sheer brilliance of James Baldwin. His sharp wit, beautiful writing, and clear, forceful, complex commentary is just as moving to read, 70 years later. We are so lucky to have this collection. We are so lucky to have had this person walk among us and share his work with the world.
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