45 pages • 1 hour read
James BaldwinA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
In this brief letter, addressed to his 15-year-old nephew, Baldwin announces his aspirations for James, also named after Baldwin, which includes the exhortation that he must live his life so as to survive. Marking the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Baldwin takes stock of the harsh reality of social progress since emancipation. Survival is Baldwin’s primary concern, highlighting the fact that the life of a Black teenager was by no means held in high esteem in the Harlem of 1963. In fact, Baldwin grimly notes the similarities between the fragility of African American young men’s social standing in 1963 and the present day. Baldwin lays out the systemic oppression into which James was born.
For example, White people in America espouse values of equality and justice that are not practiced. This hypocrisy is blatantly obvious to Black people, but White people are blind to this fault. Therefore, African Americans must educate the White people who are willing and able to understand this basic double-standard; thereby enacting social change by forcing White America to see the reality of the relationship between white privilege and Black oppression.
Using the extended metaphor of the dungeon, which was the African American reality in 1963, Baldwin also harkens back to traditional Black spiritual hymns, from which his title springs.
By James Baldwin
Another Country
James Baldwin
A Talk to Teachers
James Baldwin
Blues for Mister Charlie
James Baldwin
Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin
Going To Meet The Man
James Baldwin
Go Tell It on the Mountain
James Baldwin
I Am Not Your Negro
James Baldwin
If Beale Street Could Talk
James Baldwin
If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?
James Baldwin
Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin
No Name in the Street
James Baldwin
Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin
Sonny's Blues
James Baldwin
Stranger in the Village
James Baldwin
The Amen Corner
James Baldwin
The Rockpile
James Baldwin
A Black Lives Matter Reading List
View Collection
African American Literature
View Collection
Black History Month Reads
View Collection
Contemporary Books on Social Justice
View Collection
Creative Nonfiction
View Collection
Essays & Speeches
View Collection
Existentialism
View Collection
LGBTQ Literature
View Collection
Memoir
View Collection
Politics & Government
View Collection