Notes of a Native Son Study Guide

Notes of a Native Son is a collection of essays written by James Baldwin during the 1940s and 1950s pre-civil rights era to illuminate the life conditions for the Negro people during this in America. In the book's first essay, Baldwin derides Harriet Beecher Stowe's pre-Civil War novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, as the icon for inaccurately portraying the full scope of the Negro experience. Baldwin calls the book a very bad novel in its self righteous and virtuous sentimentality. (read more)