Notes of a Native Son Essay | Critical Essay #3

Notes of a Native Son Critical Essay #3

Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In this essay, Korb discusses Baldwin's thoughts about African- American identity in Baldwin's work.

The essays that comprise Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son were initially published in numerous magazines over a period of seven years. Despite the different places and periods in which Baldwin wrote these ten essays, they are remarkably of a piece, in fact, so much so that when African American scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., first read the collection as a teenager in 1965, he recalls that "It was the first time I had heard a voice capturing the terrible exhilaration and anxiety of being a person of African descent in this country." From its publication to the present day, Notes of a Native Son has stood as a definitive text on African American...
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