![]() ![]() ![]() Baldwin's first response to the suggestion of publishing his essays, which were largely autobiographical, was that he was "too young" to publish his "memoirs." Baldwin had, after all, only published one other book prior to Notes, and on top of this he was only thirty years old, which meant that he was in his twenties when he wrote the essays. ![]() The subjects of his essays vary as Baldwin ponders his own reactions to the significance of the so-called protest novel to the circumstances that led many African-American writers of his time to become expatriates.Īccording to Baldwin's biographer, David Leeming, the idea for Baldwin's collection came from an old school friend, Sol Stein, who had become an editor at Beacon Press. Through the eyes and mind of one of America's most effective essayists, the conditions of being an African American living in a society that is grappling with the consequences of racial discrimination are witnessed firsthand. James Baldwin's collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son, with the individual essays having been originally written during the 1940s and 1950s, gives readers a thoughtful commentary on the social environment in the United States in the era of the Civil Rights Movement. ![]()
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