Baldwin, James (Vol. 1) | Baldwin, James 1924–
Baldwin, James 1924–
A Black American novelist, essayist, and playwright, and one of the foremost spokesmen for American Blacks, Baldwin is best known for his novel Another Country. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 1-4, rev. ed.)
Taken together [the essays comprising Notes of a Native Son] make up the best book I have ever read about the American Negro, a book that conveys a phenomenally keen sense of the special quality of Negro experience today. What distinguishes these pieces, even apart from the clarity, subtlety, and vividness with which they are written, is Baldwin's complex conception of the Negro as a man who is simultaneously like unto all other men and yet profoundly, perhaps irrevocably, different. The nature of the sameness and the nature of the difference are the subject of the book, and he never allows himself to forget the one term while exploring the other.
But it is precisely the loss of complexity...
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