James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues"

A close reading of James Baldwin's short story "Sonny's Blues" that provides insight into his life and ideas about art.

Tom Jenks's reading of James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" follows a scene-by-scene, sometimes line-by-line, discussion of the pattern by which Baldwin indelibly writes "Sonny's Blues" into the consciousness of readers. It provides ongoing observations of the aesthetics underlying the particulars of the story, with references to Edward P. Jones (whose magnificent story "All Aun...