Notes of a Native Son -- James Baldwin

<p><b>#26 on <i>The Guardian's</i> list of 100 best nonfiction books of all time, the essays explore what it means to be Black in America <p/></b>In an age of Black Lives Matter, James Baldwin's essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad are as powerful today as when they were first written. With films like <i>I Am Not Your Negro</i> and the forthcoming <i>If Beale Street Could Talk</i> bringing renewed interest to Baldwin's life and work, <b><i>Notes of a Native Son </i></b>serves as a valuable introduction.</p><p>Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in <i>Notes of a Native Son </i>capture a view of black life and black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era. Writing as an artist, activist, and social critic, Baldwin probes the complex condition of being black in America. With a keen eye, he examines everything from the significance of the protest novel to the motives and circumstances of the many black expatriates of the time, from his home in "The Harlem Ghetto" to a sobering "Journey to Atlanta." <p/><i>Notes of a Native Son</i> inaugurated Baldwin as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the twentieth century, and many of his observations have proven almost proph