Notes of a Native Son (1955) was Baldwin's first book of nonfiction, and consists of 10 previously published essays preceded by a brief autobiography. These essays appeared in Partisan Review, Commentary and Harper's Magazine. Several of the early essays are a bit stiff and stilted, not unexpected for a young writer. However, you also feel as if he is trying to walk a fine line, being a black writer writing for a predominantly white audience, one who is financially struggling and is dependent on these articles to eke out a meager living. It is in the later essays that the passion and wit of the Baldwin we know and love comes out.

The brightest jewel of this collection is "Notes of a Native Son", which is set in 1943, the year that his stepfather died. He vividly describes the racially charged climate, when black soldiers were brutally mistreated and the daily racial strife led to riots in several US cities; his experiences working at a munitions factory in New Jersey and a explosion of anger toward a waitress who refused to serve him at a restaurant, which nearly led to his death at the hands of a white mob; his diificult and complicated relationship with his father, who died just before Baldwin 19th birthday; and a Harlem riot that occurs just after his father's funeral, triggered by a confrontation between a white city policeman and a black soldier on leave.

Baldwin makes a powerful statement of the complexity of black and white relations, and each group's hatred toward the other:

"One is always in the position of having to decide between amputation and gangrene. Amputation is swift but time may prove that amputation was not necessary--or one may delay the amputation too long. Gangrene is slow, but it is impossible to be sure that one is reading one's symptoms right. The idea of going through life as a cripple is more than one can bear, and equally unbearable is the risk of swelling up slowly, in agony, with poison. And the trouble, finally, is that the risks are real even if the choices do not exist."

Baldwin's father was a preacher, but he was not very good, due to his bitterness and inability to connect with others. Baldwin was a successful child preacher, which won the admiration and love of his father. However, once Baldwin decided that he wanted to abandon the pulpit and dedicate his life to writing, he incurred the wrath of his father, and they rarely spoke after that.

Baldwin writes about a visit he took with his mother and aunt to visit his father at a hospital on Long Island, the last time he would see him alive:

"It was on the 28th of July...that I visited my father for the first time during his illness and for the last time in his life. The moment I saw him I knew why I had put off this visit so long. I had told my mother that I did not want to see him because I hated him. But this was not true. It was only that I had hated him and I wanted to hold on to this hatred. I did not want to look on him as a ruin: it was not a ruin I had hated. I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain."

The last part of the book concerns his life as an expatriate living in Europe after World War II. "Encounter on the Seine" describes the experiences of American blacks living in Paris, particularly the awkward interactions with white Americans, Parisians, and Africans. In "Equal in Paris" he is imprisoned in a Parisian jail for eight days for a crime that he did not commit. In the last essay, "Stranger in the Village", he is invited to spend time at the home of a friend in a small Swiss village whose residents have never seen a black man.

I did not enjoy this book as well as The Fire Next Time and The Evidence of Things Not Seen, two of his other nonfiction books. However, the title essay is searing and brilliant, and the book overall is a worthwhile read to learn about the black experience in America and Europe in the mid-20th century. ( )

This book of essays by Baldwin focuses on issues of race in America, but also uses his experiences in Paris to make interesting contrasts.

I picked the book up on account of being blown away (at least twice) by Giovanni's Room, but this was a pretty poor choice for a vacation read. Baldwin is a very smart writer and the subject matter leads him into some technical passages composed in a fairly academic style. The literary criticism in the first two essays (‘Everybody's Protest Novel’ and ‘Many Thousands Gone’) went pretty much over my head.

However, the essays that drew from his experiences with his father and his time in Europe were more readable and do a wonderful job of conveying nuanced emotion. The autobiographical stuff seems to loaded towards the back of the collection, so don't give up if you are having trouble starting out. ( )

A collection of essays, observations and reminiscenses on race by James Baldwin, author of "Go Tell It On the Mountain". At turns cynical and hopeful, with a quite intriguing section on Baldwin's time living in France, and how attitudes toward the Negro differed from those in America. Historically interesting; I'd hope that some racial progress has been made here since the early 1950's, when most of these essays were penned. ( )