As I read Baldwin’s essay, “Stranger in the Village”, his essay gave me a feeling of rage and his writing felt almost as if he were giving us a page out of his own personal diary. Baldwin’s rage seemed very sincere and gave us an argument on why he feels as if he is justified to feel so. Baldwin’s essay shows the different ways we influence and reflect on each other. Baldwin gave us his account on a historical background as to the differences of how white people feel invading land and thinking of how white people feel when they are surrounded by colored individuals. As opposed to black people in the same situation. Persistently, he uses that racial designation as his primary model for making someone feel like a stranger. It’s never someone’s …show more content…
personality, their money, their attractiveness, and their skill set. It’s the color of their skin or their ethnicity that seems to make them the “stranger” of a group. I feel that Baldwin may not realize that there’s a lot of other factors, besides race, which makes people feel different. I’ve hung around a bunch of white people and I currently have white friends now. They are around the same age as me with similar personalities and still felt like I was so much different from them. Their confidence in everything that they do makes me feel like I am around those who were at a much higher level than me, they were above me. I wouldn’t say that all white people are the same but it’s weird being around some white people because of the way we may think about black people. White people can make some black people feel very uncomfortable. It’s sad to say that being white, means being accepted in this country. Black people can’t act black because of all the racial allegations. Or in other words, be themselves. As I make it into the professional world, I have to be careful of the white people that I have around me.
The differences in confidence and knowledge can accomplish the exact same thing. Baldwin’s constant use of the word “stranger” gave me a new sense of the word as he continued to use the word throughout his essay. Baldwin seemed to even question the word throughout his essay by giving different examples of strangers and giving us a take on how different ethnicities face being a stranger in a land. I think Baldwin was trying to show the readers how he was taking a brave step forward into a village who had never seen a “black man” before. He had no idea from the start how this would turn out which in that generation was a hit or miss because of all the racism that had occurred in the world. When Baldwin uses the word stranger in the essay, I was able to develop an idea of what it means, and how it changes during the reading. It appears as he was portraying the word “stranger” as him not belonging in the village. When reading more into the essay it seems like he accepted the fact that he was in fact, not as much of a stranger in the village as he was the first summer he arrived. Baldwin felt alienated. In my opinion, Baldwin talks about how history can affect the culture of how we treat other races and each other. It is up to the American people to face the strangers. White people invented the “Negro” and I wonder why they did so. Sometimes I wonder if some black people wanted to be segregated. What if things were actually
different? In Baldwin’s perspective he didn’t think that white people wanted us here. I think they need us more than ever because we help build the world that we live in. Black people worked for the white people. Would black people really get along with white people or with one another. They clearly can’t get along now with other black people. Capitalism is about the best man winning in an ideal world. Baldwin said “when one considers the history of the Negro in America it is of the greatest importance to recognize that the moral beliefs of a person, or a people, are never really as tenuous as life”. This to me is very important because the younger generation nowadays don’t care to even know what black people went through and the struggles that they had to face. Some of the ones that do know, don’t embrace it and have respect for one another. When people meet me they realize that I’m not any of the things they think I should be. I prove to them their generalizations are wrong. I don’t let society tell me what I should be. I just wake up every morning and get on with life. Back then when I was growing up, many children of Haitian descent would hide being Haitian, as if it were a bad thing. I can definitely relate to this because other children would make fun of Haitians and laugh at the way they carried themselves. It wasn’t there fault. I didn’t look Haitian until you heard my first and last name. People always bashed Haitians. Saying that we ate cats and did Voodoo. Of course, people would ask me why my lips are so big and full. Having a nose that is different, nappy hair, etc. Black people generally look the same and you can’t tell them apart. Now that people see that Haitians are affiliated with riches and love our delicious food, they show us more respect. They are starting to get the recognition that they deserve. We look different!!!!
Notes of a Native Son is a nonfiction essay written by James Baldwin. The essay is about how Baldwin felt about his father and how he felt after his father had passed. Baldwin also realizes and comes to terms with many things during that time period. Racism is also one of Baldwin’s principal themes and uses it in many of his essays. Rebecca Skloot similarly wrote about a woman from near that time period. Skloot wrote an excerpt titled “The Miracle Woman”, the woman’s name in this piece was Henrietta Lacks whose cells would go on to live much longer than she did. Henrietta was a strong willed woman who had many children and knew when things weren’t right, so when she felt something was wrong with her uterus she went to the hospital and was diagnosed with cervical cancer. During Henrietta’s surgery a doctor took a slap of her uterus and grew her cells in a laboratory which became one of the most important cures and tools in medicine.
James Baldwin wrote “Notes of a Native Son” in the mid-1950s, right in the heart of the Civil Rights Movement while he resided in Harlem. At this time, Harlem housed many African Americans and therefore had amplified amounts of racially charged crimes compared to the rest of the country. Baldwin’s life was filled with countless encounters with hatred, which he begins to analyze in this text. The death of his father and the hatred and bitterness Baldwin feels for him serves as the focus of this essay. While Baldwin describes and analyzes his relationship with his father, he weaves in public racial episodes occurring simultaneously. He begins the story by relating the hatred he has for his father to the hatred that sparked the Harlem riots. He then internalizes various public events in order to demonstrate how hatred dominates the whole world and not only his own life. Baldwin freq...
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ novel Between the World and Me is the descendant of Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. It is the next in the series of great novels that reflect on the narratives of black people in America. He explores the idea of the black body and how it is in danger. But, the most powerful message that Coates gives to the coming of age black youth is that despite knowing that danger, we must live life without fear.
Baldwin makes people see the flaws in our society by comparing it to Europe. Whether we decide to take it as an example to change to, or follow our American mindset and take this as the biased piece that it is and still claim that we are the best country in the world, disregard his words and continue with our strive for
Baldwin’s father died a broken and ruined man on July 29th, 1943. This only paralleled the chaos occurring around him at the time, such as the race riots of Detroit and Harlem which Baldwin describes to be as “spoils of injustice, anarchy, discontent, and hatred.” (63) His father was born in New Orleans, the first generation of “free men” in a land where “opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else.” (63) Although free from slavery, African-Americans still faced the hardships of racism and were still oppressed from any opportunities, which is a factor that led Baldwin’s father to going mad and eventually being committed. Baldwin would also later learn how “…white people would do anything to keep a Negro down.” (68) For a preacher, there was little trust and faith his father ...
According to James Baldwin’s “My Dungeon Shook: A Letter to My Nephew” African Americans cannot obtain their piece of the American Dream. Baldwin wrote a letter to his nephew in hope of guiding him through life. Baldwin had many words of wisdom to share, mostly words provoked by pain and anger. Baldwin wanted to teach his nephew about the cruelty of society. His main point was to teach his nephew not to believe the white man and his words. He wanted to encourage his nephew to succeed in life but not to expect the unassailable. By believing the white man one can not succeed but by knowing where one comes from will lead to success was the foundation of Baldwin’s message (243-246).
The essay “Notes of a Native Son” takes place at a very volatile time in history. The story was written during a time of hate and discrimination toward African Americans in the United States. James Baldwin, the author of this work is African American himself. His writing, along with his thoughts and ideas were greatly influenced by the events happening at the time. At the beginning of the essay, Baldwin makes a point to mention that it was the summer of 1943 and that race riots were occurring in Detroit. The story itself takes place in Harlem, a predominantly black area experiencing much of the hatred and inequalities that many African-Americans were facing throughout the country. This marks the beginning of a long narrative section that Baldwin introduces his readers to before going into any analysis at all.
James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son" demonstrates his complex and unique relationship with his father. Baldwin's relationship with his father is very similar to most father-son relationships but the effect of racial discrimination on the lives of both, (the father and the son) makes it distinctive. At the outset, Baldwin accepts the fact that his father was only trying to look out for him, but deep down, he cannot help but feel that his father was imposing his thoughts and experiences on him. Baldwin's depiction of his relationship with his father while he was alive is full of loathing and detest for him and his ideologies, but as he matures, he discovers his father in himself. His father's hatred in relation to the white American society had filled him with hatred towards his father. He realizes that the hatred inside both of them has disrupted their lives.
He does not know about his father well because he hardly spoke with him. While others describe his father as handsome, proud, ingrown but for him his father looks like an African tribal chieftain. He feels that his father is the harshest man he has ever known. Baldwin never felt glad to see his father when he returned home. Up until this point, Baldwin was not fully aware of the outside world, but after his father’s death, he understood the meanings of his father’s warnings, he discovered the weight of white people and felt awful to live with them. His father’s temper was a mercy of his pride to never trust a white person. His father’s death changed his life. He started working in defense plants, living among southerners, white and black. After he became independent, he started to experience racism. Similarly, Brent Staples, writer of “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space” had also not experienced racism before he arrived at the University of Chicago. When he was first away from home, he was not familiar with the language of fear because, in Chester, Pennsylvania, the small angry industrial town, he was scarcely noticeable against a backdrop of gang warfare, street knifing, and murders. As a result, he grew up as a good boy. Both the writers experience racism when they were exposed to the outside world. Consequently, Baldwin experienced it when he
Identity in James Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village” and Zora Neale Hurston’s “How it Feels to be Colored Me”
James Baldwin, an African-American writer, was born to a minister in 1924 and survived his childhood in New York City. The author is infamous for his pieces involving racial separatism with support from the blues. Readers can understand Harlem as a negative, unsafe environment from Baldwin’s writings and description of his hometown as a “dreadful place…a kind of concentration camp” (Hicks). Until the writer was at the age of twenty-four, he lived in a dehumanizing, racist world where at ten years old, he was brutally assaulted by police officers for the unchanging fact that he is African-American. In 1948, Baldwin escaped to France to continue his work without the distractions of the racial injustice
James Baldwin, an African American author born in Harlem, was raised by his violent step-father, David. His father was a lay preacher who hated whites and felt that all whites would be judged as they deserve by a vengeful God. Usually, the father's anger was directed toward his son through violence. Baldwin's history, in part, aids him in his insight of racism within the family. He understands that racists are not born, but rather racist attitudes and behaviors are learned in the early stages of childhood. Baldwin's Going to Meet the Man is a perfect example of his capability to analyze the growth of a innocent child to a racist.
The works of James Baldwin are directly related to the issues of racism, religion and personal conflicts, and sexuality and masculinity during Baldwin's years.James Baldwin's works, both fiction and nonfiction were in some instance a direct reflection his life. Through close interpretation you can combine his work to give a "detailed" look into his actual life. However since most writings made by him are all considered true works of literature we can't consider them to be of autobiographical nature.
James Baldwin was born in Harlem in a time where his African American decent was enough to put more challenges in front of him than the average (white) American boy faced. His father was a part of the first generation of free black men. He was a bitter, overbearing, paranoid preacher who refused change and hated the white man. Despite of his father, his color, and his lack of education, James Baldwin grew up to be a respected author of essays, plays, and novels. While claiming that he was one of the best writers of the era could be argued either way, it is hard to argue the fact that he was indeed one of the most well-known authors of the time. One of his intriguing skills as a writer is his ability to intertwine narration and analysis in his essays. James Baldwin mixes narration and analysis in his essays so well that coherence is never broken, and the subconscious is so tempted to agree with and relate to what he says, that if you don’t pay close attention, one will find himself agreeing with Baldwin, when he wasn’t even aware Baldwin was making a point. Physical placement of analytical arguments and analytical transitions, frequency and size of analytical arguments, and the language used within the analytical arguments are the keys to Baldwin’s graceful persuasion. Throughout this essay, I will be using Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son” for examples. “Notes of a Native Son” is an essay that Baldwin wrote which focuses primarily on his life around the time his father died, which also happens to be the same time his youngest brother was born.
In paragraph three of James Baldwin's 'Stranger in the Village' (1955), he alludes to emotions that are significant, dealing with conflicts that arise in the Swiss village. Of these emotions are two, astonishment and outrage, which represent the relevant feelings of Baldwin, an American black man. These two emotions, for Baldwin's ancestors, create arguments about the 'Negro' and their rights to be considered 'human beings' (Baldwin 131). Baldwin, an American Negro, feels undeniable rage toward the village because of the misconception of his complexion, a misconception that denies Baldwin human credibility and allows him to be perceived as a 'living wonder' (129).