What Do I Read Next?
Native Son (1940) marks Richard Wright’s debut novel. The protagonist, Bigger Thomas, is a young man navigating life in 1930s Chicago, striving to overcome poverty and racism but finds himself ensnared in a series of tragic events. The novel explores the impact of poverty and the experience of being black in America. While Baldwin criticized Wright for depicting such an angry character, many critics regard this as Wright’s most compelling work.
Collected Essays (1998) features Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, and The Devil Finds Work. Critics often assert that Baldwin’s essay writing was his strongest suit. This collection showcases the breadth of his non-fiction work.
W. E. B. Du Bois had been writing essays nearly fifty years before Baldwin’s works were published. Despite the time gap, their themes are remarkably similar. W. E. B. Du Bois: Writings (1986) compiles many of his essay collections, including The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade, Souls of Black Folk, and Dusk at Dawn.
Zora Neale Hurston, a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, is best known for her fiction. Nevertheless, she was also a prolific essayist, and her essays can be found in Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings (1995).
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), despite Baldwin’s criticism, remains a classic. Stowe wrote the novel to highlight the urgent need to abolish slavery.
Everything and Nothing: The Dorothy Dandridge Tragedy (2000) narrates the rags-to-riches story of this African-American actress, who rose from modest beginnings to win an Academy Award, only to die under mysterious circumstances.
Langston Hughes, a contemporary of Baldwin, was renowned as both a poet and a fiction writer. His collection, The Ways of White Folks (1969), consists of stories examining the racial tensions between white and black Americans during the 1920s and 1930s.
Another of Baldwin’s contemporaries, Chester Himes, wrote If He Hollers, Let Him Go (1968). Set in southern California during the 1940s, the novel tells the story of the only black foreman in a World War II shipyard and the challenges he faces.
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