Sonny’s Blues (Further Reading)

Further Reading

• Albert, Richard N. “The Jazz-Blues Motif in Baldwin’s ’Sonny’s Blues’,” in College Literature, Spring, 1984, pp. 178-85.

  This article discusses the use that Baldwin makes of music in “Sonny’s Blues,” and explains the role that jazz and blues play in the African-American tradition.

• Bone, Robert A. The Negro Novel in America Yale University Press, 1958.

  A classic, if somewhat dated, historical evaluation of the place of the novel in the African-American literary tradition and the place of African-American novels in American literary history. A “Postscript” concentrates specifically on James Baldwin.

• Hakutani, Yoshinobu, and Robert Butler. The City in African-American Literature, Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995.

  Containing two essays specifically about James Baldwin, this collection traces the use of the image of the city in African-American literature from Frederick Douglass to the present day. One of the Baldwin essays, by Fred L. Standley, holds that Baldwin viewed the city as far superior to the countryside, and discusses Baldwin’s trips to the South.

• O’Daniel, Therman B., editor. James Baldwin: A Critical Evaluation, Howard University Press, 1977.

  O’Daniel has compiled the works of others that provide an assessment of Baldwin as an essayist, playwright, and fiction writer. It deals extensively with Baldwin’s principal works and less with his short stories.