Sonny's Blues Sparknotes

African-Americans have endured difficulties that affected them in ways some cannot fathom. It was not until the outbreak of the Negro movement, or more commonly knowns as the Harlem Renaissance, that Jazz was born. Music became a unifier for the African-Americans living in injustice. Tracy Shepard offers a critique on James Baldwin’s short story named “Sonny’s Blues”. Sonny’s Blues was an insightful and enlightening outlook of African-Americans during the period of the Harlem Renaissance.
As Sherard states clearly in her analysis, “Sonny’s Bebop: Baldwin’s “Blues Text” as Intracultural Critique”, she is able to conjure the significance of Blues and Bebop and correlate its importance to the African-Americans and “the historical contexts of

their own cultural norms” (Sherard 691). It is here that Sherard centers on Bebop and it’s significance to the story by targeting when the two brothers attempts at survival post-Korean War Harlem. While the narrator struggles to assimilate to white culture, his brother Sonny turns to music. Music for sonny transgresses as a “sort of agency not only in his own life, but also in the narrative of the lives that comprise the history of African Americans” (Sherard 692), which becomes that of an outlet of expression for the suffering African Americans in Harlem. Shepard brings light to the fact that “ “Sonny’s Blues” not only tells a story; it is about the telling of stories” (Sherard 692) highlighting Baldwin’s ability to convey the sufferings of those who resided in Harlem and bring them to light to tell their stories.
To cope with the maltreatment being shoved onto African-Americans in Harlem, some turned to drugs, some to music, and others appropriated to that of the white culture.

This as Sherard states, provided as a temporary agent to them and allowed them to “ignore the struggles within [their] community” (Sherard 692). Once sucked into their addictions to escape Harlem, most soon lost sight of their African-American cultural norms. Shepard further analyzes this by pointing out a particular scene in Baldwin’s story in which the narrator encounters that of the standard Harlem residence, which he describes to be “always high and raggy” and “Sonny’s friend” (Baldwin 77). The scene reveals Sonny’s friend to be “the ghetto dynamic [the narrator] worked so hard to rise above” (Sherard 694), once being reminded of the typical person who resided in Harlem, the narrator immediately disliked him. As Shepard analyzed, this particular scene limelights “that what is at stake is Sonny’s adherence to or transcendence of the Harlem-as-dead-end plot the boy is intrinsically aware of but which the narrator has difficulty formulating because of his own apparent escape from it” (Sherard 695) which is his urgentness to assimilate to white culture. Shepard makes clear that African Americans in Harlem’s need to escape their culture, whether it be by assimilating or doing drugs, prohibits them from actualizing the necessity and becoming self-aware “of the context of their own cultural forms” and the

dangers that can result from “hybrid narratives” and “appropriation” (Sherrad 693). It is in this same conversation between Sonny’s friend and the narrator that Sherrad identifies “the effect of Jazz’s improvisation on standard melody lines” (Sherard 695) that Baldwin incorporates in his dialogue between the two. Shearad highlights yet again that “Bebop is as significant as the Harlem Renaissance” (Sherard 699). Jazz is very intricately intertwined into the writing of the story by creating the repetition of dialogue between sonny’s friend and the narrators conversation with the lines “That’s all”, “That’s what I mean”, and “You know what I mean” (Baldwin 79). This repetition of dialogue devised for the resonation of improvised Jazz music. Jazz, the Blues, and Bebop serve as one of the foundations of the story because of the fact that it strongly represented the “urban African-American culture” (Sherard 691) which served to be an outlet of those suffered in Harlem, specifically Sonny.
To rectify, Sherard offers an inspiring and take on James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues”. She provides a critical analysis and careful examination on Baldwin’s words. Sherard helped us to realize that during the Harlem Renaissance, Jazz became a link to the people in Harlem. Sherard also brought to light the fact Baldwin’s message to the people of Harlem the necessity of embracing their cultural norms. Shepard allows us to better understand the injustices the people in Harlem faced from BLANK to BLAK that Baldwin states in “Sonny’s Blues”. In times of conflict, it is important to remember to unify as one and understand each other, and that is what Sherard and Baldwin have reminded us of.