{"id":4468,"date":"2025-02-20T22:28:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T09:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/?p=4468"},"modified":"2025-05-27T22:37:19","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T10:37:19","slug":"notes-of-a-native-son-james-baldwin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2025\/02\/20\/notes-of-a-native-son-james-baldwin\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes of a Native Son — James Baldwin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A compilation of pieces written from 1948 to 1955, all concerning contemporary African-American life and culture. The first part consists of various reviews: Baldwin is quite dismissive of Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin<\/em>, which he says is not a novel so much as a pamphlet. Seems funny to review a hundred-year-old book, but I guess it was relevant to the tumultuous times Baldwin was living in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also reviews a film called Carmen Jones<\/em>, an African-American version of Bizet\u2019s opera Carmen<\/em>. Is this as strange as it sounds? Baldwin certainly thinks so. He didn\u2019t even like Harry Belafonte\u2019s performance, though to be fair it seems the deficiencies were already in the script, and the whole concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the book is more informed by Baldwin\u2019s own history. He lived through a lot of difficult times, as did all African-Americans in the middle of the 20th century. He writes evocatively and his stories are interesting and compelling. He does write with a lot of certainty though \u2013 he is pretty sure he is right about a lot of things, and overuses words like \u201ctherefore\u201d to embellish his opinions, thoughtful though they may be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wouldn\u2019t say this book is dated; rather it feels to me that it is very much of its time. But what do I know? It was long before my time.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A compilation of pieces written from 1948 to 1955, all concerning contemporary African-American life and culture. The first part consists of various reviews: Baldwin is quite dismissive of Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin, which he says is not a novel so much … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,149,251],"class_list":["post-4468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-books","tag-essays","tag-james-baldwin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4468"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4472,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468\/revisions\/4472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}