Notes of a Native Son

In “Stranger in the Village,” Baldwin recounts some of his experiences in a remote Swiss mountain village. Do you think there is more possibility for positive interracial community in such a setting than in a major metropolitan center like Paris or New York City? If so, why? If not, why not?

Baldwin’s reading of Carmen Jones is geared towards the Hollywood industry generally, but since the time of his review, a small but significant independent Black cinema has grown. How might Baldwin’s concerns about Hollywood be addressed in Black independent cinema? How might you apply Baldwin’s analysis in “Carmen Jones” to other contemporary Hollywood films?

How has Baldwin used his writings to process his relationship to his father? How might his reading of Native Son, for instance, be different if his relationship to his father had been different?

Around the time of Baldwin’s publishing Notes of a Native Son, other Black writers across the African Diaspora had been exploring the role of violence in Black liberation. Despite Baldwin’s criticisms, how might violence be a necessary component of Black liberation?

Native Son continues to be read as a tragic exposition of Black power. Given that Baldwin sympathized with the Black Power movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, how might he have re-evaluated his position on Wright’s novel if he had been asked to re-write his review?

Baldwin’s proposition that abolitionism (at least in the form of Harriet Beecher Stowe) can still be racist complicates our view of contemporary anti-racism. In what ways might we apply Baldwin’s insights about the protest genre to present-day social movements?

Almost without exception, Baldwin’s writing is intensely personal in that he speaks only about that with which he has had direct experience. What are the down sides to this approach? What blind spots emerge in his essays where his personal perspective on a matter blinds him to other ways of thinking?

Baldwin his very little to say about his mother, or his sisters, or any other women for that matter. What gaps does this silence leave in some of his essays? Where might a more robust discussion of gender have strengthened his analysis?