Everybody's Protest Novel
Essays
“I am completely indebted to Jimmy Baldwin’s prose. It liberated me as a writer.”—Toni Morrison
This collectible edition celebrates James Baldwin’s 100th-year anniversary, probing the shortcomings of the American protest novel and the harmful representations of Black identity in film and fiction
Originally published in Notes of a Native Son, the essays “Autobiographical Notes,” “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” “Many Thousands Gone,” and “Carmen Jones: The Dark is Light Enough,” showcase Baldwin’s incisive voice as a social and literary critic.
“Autobiographical Notes” outlines Baldwin’s journey as a Black writer and his hesitant transition from fiction to nonfiction. In the following essays, Baldwin explores the Black experience through the lens of popular media, critiquing the ways in which Black characters—in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s…
James Baldwin (1924–1987) was a novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic, and one of America’s foremost writers. His writing explores palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-twentieth-century America. A Harlem, New York, native, he primarily made his home in the south of France. He is the author of several novels and books of nonfiction, including Notes of a Native Son, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Another Country, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, If Beale Street Could Talk, Just Above My Head, The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, and The Evidence of Things Not Seen, and of the poetry collection Jimmy’s Blues.
Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin
Encounter on the Seine
James Baldwin
The Harlem Ghetto
James Baldwin
Everybody's Protest Novel
James Baldwin
The Price of the Ticket
James Baldwin
Nothing Personal
James Baldwin
Baldwin for Our Times
James Baldwin