Most critics believe that Baldwin's best works were his essays. In The Fire Next Time (1963), published during the Civil Rights movement, Baldwin wrote extensively about his own adolescence, which mirrored the experiences of John Grimes in "The Rockpile" and Go Tell It on the Mountain. The two essays in this book collectively discuss the racial relations between African Americans and whites and note that the two races are ultimately inseparable.

Unlike his other works, including "The Rockpile," Baldwin's novel Giovanni's Room (1956) features all white characters. David, an engaged man and a homosexual, struggles to find his sexual identity and reconcile his troubled family past while living abroad in Paris.

Ralph Ellison's classic novel about race, Invisible Man (1952), chronicles the experiences of a young, nameless African-American man. Through his travels north to New York City and several misguided attempts to find...