The Blues

The Blues

Essayist, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, poet, social activist- James Baldwin was the best at it all. “Baldwin was born in Harlem, where he was raised by his mother, Berdis, and his stepfather, David, a storefront preacher” (Leeming). “My childhood was awful,” Baldwin once said (Roberts). At age fourteen, suddenly overwhelmed by what he perceived as his sexual depravity, Baldwin turned to the Pentecostal church for help. Baldwin identified himself as a homosexual. This particular church of faith had a strict form of religion. So for Baldwin to be a homosexual, the Pentecostal church would not accept him. Baldwin gained his popularity from his first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain in 1953. This story was about a Harlem child's relationship with his father adjacent to the background of his being saved in the Pentecostal church. For Baldwin, writing was an act of love. “Consequently, Baldwin eloquently advocates that “the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real”(Standley). Baldwin left the United States for Paris in 1948.

“Frequently anthologized, James Baldwin's Sonny’s Blues tells the story of two brothers who, in the end, come to understand each other. More specifically, it highlights, through its two main characters, the two sides of the African-American experience” (Sonny’s Blues: Introduction). One of the brothers named Sonny has never tried to understand and must find an exit for the deep hurt and suffering that he is experiencing. Sonny canals his suffering into music, especially bebop jazz and the blues. This story opens when the narrator finds out through the newspaper that his brother was arrested for dealing heroin. The narrator is riding the subway to his teaching job at a high school. When the narrator leaves the school, he starts to converse with an old friend of Sonny’s. They talk about sonny’s arrest and the issues they were facing. The friend tells the narrator that he could not help his brother any longer. This angered the narrator because he too had given up on his brother. The friend then begins to explain to the narrator, who he is to Sonny’s older brother, how he feels accountable for leading Sonny onto drugs; but the narrator cuts in and inquires what will happen to his brother next. The friend utters that Sonny will be sent to a rehab facility that will try to cure him; then he will be released to start his addiction again.

“For over a century the blues has served as the musical anchor of American music. Without the blues, we could not imagine gospel, rock'n' roll, rock, and rap music” (Ferris).The blues is a name given to musical genres that originated in African American communities. These blues were deprived from spirituals and work songs; people had