Book Review: Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin (1955)

Paperback cover of Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin, originally published in 1955.

The author James Baldwin, 1924-1987.

Notes of a Native Son, published in 1955, was James Baldwin’s first collection of nonfiction. Baldwin’s first book was the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, published in 1953, and it put him on the map as an important young writer. Notes of a Native Son further established Baldwin as one of the leading African American authors of the day. The book’s title was a deliberate echo of Richard Wright’s novel, which Baldwin offered a lengthy critique of. The edition I read of Notes of a Native Son included Baldwin’s preface to the 1984 edition of the book, which is quite interesting to read. In it, Baldwin confides that he initially wasn’t that enthused about the idea of collecting his essays as a book. Fortunately for us, he was persuaded to do so. 

Baldwin is probably best-known today for his essays rather than his fiction. Baldwin’s biographer James Campbell wrote of his essays:

“On reaching the by now characteristic rhetorical finale, they would exhibit a common theme: how to survive this pain—the pain of hatred and self-hatred—which threatens to wreck the structure of the self more violently than anything white people individually can do.” (Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin, by James Campbell, p.93) 

I’ll admit that the essays in the first section of Notes of a Native Son weren’t my favorites, partly because, though I cringe to admit it, I haven’t actually read the books Baldwin is critiquing, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Native Son. I was supposed to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin for a Civil War class in college, but I only got about halfway through it and I can’t remember anything about it. In the first essay, “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” I wish that Baldwin more clearly defined what he considers a protest novel to be. Is it merely a work of fiction that offers a critique of a social ill, or are there other qualifications it needs to meet?

The essays in the rest of the book are all based on Baldwin’s life experience, and these essays are the core of Notes of a Native Son. For me, the title essay was the strongest one in the book. It’s the most personal, as Baldwin describes his complicated feelings towards his father. (Actually his stepfather, but since Baldwin didn’t have a relationship with his biological father, he always refers to his stepfather as his father in his writings.) The first two sentences of the essay are as good a hook as the opening lines of any fiction: “On the 29^th of July, in 1943, my father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born.” (p.85) Wow. 

The essay “Notes of a Native Son” gives the reader a lot of information about Baldwin’s childhood, and it’s interesting to see how Baldwin’s life paralleled that of John Grimes, the protagonist of Go Tell It on the Mountain. It’s a true tour de force personal essay. Baldwin’s biographer David Leeming writes, “Notes of a Native Son maintained the autobiographical approach that had been set in Mountain and which would color all of Baldwin’s work—fiction and nonfiction.” (James Baldwin: A Biography, by David Leeming, p.100) 

The last four essays in the book cover Baldwin’s experiences as an African American living in Europe in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. In “Equal in Paris,” Baldwin takes us inside his harrowing experience spending a week in a Paris jail after his friend stole a hotel bedsheet and then gave it to Baldwin. Paris hotels don’t take kindly to petty theft, apparently. And so, Baldwin, with his limited resources and a limited command of the French language, must navigate a judicial system that is slow moving in the extreme. 

Some of my favorite quotes from Notes of a Native Son came from Baldwin’s Introduction to the book, and his 1984 Preface. In the Preface he writes, “The conundrum of color is the inheritance of every American, be he/she legally or actually Black or White.” (p.xii) So very true, and it’s a conundrum that our country is still trying to address in a meaningful way. 

In the “Autobiographical Notes” that open the book, Baldwin writes: “In the context of the Negro problem neither whites nor blacks, for excellent reasons of their own, have the faintest desire to look back; but I think that the past is all that makes the present coherent, and further, that the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.” (p.6) Of course, Baldwin is right, and again, as a country we are still struggling to deal honestly with our past. 

The “Autobiographical Notes” also features what has become one of James Baldwin’s most famous quotes: “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” (p.9) 

While most of the time Baldwin’s prose is as sharp and clear as a windowpane, there are other times when his sentences turn and twist like switchbacks on a steep mountain road. In reviewing Baldwin’s 1972 book No Name in the Street, I noted one sentence that contained 13 commas in it. I’m not sure if any sentences in Notes of a Native Son matched that number, but there were certainly some that came close. 

Notes of a Native Son doesn’t have the same intense heat of The Fire Next Time, but that’s to be expected of a book that was composed over several years rather than a few months. Notes of a Native Son still bristles with heat, but it’s a slow simmer. 

James Campbell saw some of the frustration that suffuses Baldwin’s 1984 Preface to Notes of a Native Son firsthand. He was interviewing Baldwin on his 60^th birthday in 1984. Baldwin picked up Notes of a Native Son and started reading aloud from the essay, “The Harlem Ghetto.” “Baldwin closed the book, returned it to the table, and widened his eyes in that dramatic way of his: ‘Nothing—has—changed!’” (Campbell, p.267) 

The last sentence of the “Autobiographical Notes” concludes with Baldwin writing: “I want to be an honest man and a good writer.” (p.9) James Baldwin surely was both.