March 14, 2023

Rereading “Sonny’s Blues”

This morning I spent with James Baldwin and his 1957 short story “Sonny’s Blues.” It’s always been a favorite, and it’s what made me a fan of his work. I’ve been slowly making my way through his novels—I’ve taught Go Tell It in the Mountain and Giovanni’s Room the last two times I taught the novel course—and his short fiction and essays are excellent. One of the best things about rereading is that my forestructure changes as do the realities of the world, coloring how we look at the text—even those we think we know very well. While I always knew “Sonny’s Blues” was about listening—it struck me this time as a theme that needs to be emphasized again. People talk a lot; they seldom listen.

The unnamed narrator is an everyman figure—a reflection of his own mid-fifties black community in Harlem, but also one who is a stranger in many ways to that community. He teaches high school kids algebra—something that seems so irrelevant to their daily lives, but symbolic of how he has made something of himself. Put another way, he has escaped the “menace” of the mean streets of Harlem by educating himself and not falling prey to the darkness that permeates the story. In a sense, he has isolated himself from the community and feels superior to others he encounters throughout the story, like Sonny’s friend at the beginning, barmaids, church-goers, and even his brother Sonny.

. . .