I don't know if anyone still uses this, but I wanted to ask about possibly using James Baldwin as our group author for our final project. I have a collection of his stories and his story Sonny's Blues is in our anthology.

Sonny's Blues is the story of an algebra teacher and his heroin-addicted, Jazz musician brother. But it's probably important to note Baldwin does not glorify drug use, has a remarkably lucid style, and displays unique compassion. Reading the story and presenting it would allow us to view a portion of the world that lives in our minds as the other united states, that underground filled with shady behavior and musical icons we hear of every so often but rarely enjoy. Additionally, we would have the opportunity to view the work of a black american author who was, and has been, very influential.

I wanted to post some passages from the story I thought were particularly beautiful in order to sway judgement:

This is the narrator's (i forget his name) meeting with a drug addict toward the beginning:

[narrator ("would" should be italicized):] "How the hell would I know what you mean?" I almost whispered it, I don't know why.
"That's right," he said to the air, "how would he [italics] know what I mean?" He turned toward me again, patient and calm, and yet I somehow felt him shaking, shaking as though he were going to fall apart. I felt that ice in my guts again, the dread I'd felt all afternoon; and again I watched the barmaid, moving about the bar, washing glasses, and singing....

Another scened when the narrator hears music:
All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours...

And, slightly later: I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breat of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything.



I hope I've been succinct