"Sonny's Blues" starts off by chronicling Sonny's brother's shame at his arrest. Riding in the subway, reading it in the newspaper, he is surrounded by lights and faces that only district him from the outer darkness. He feels as though a block of ice is melting in his gut and creates trickles of cold water through his veins. Sonny was picked up for both using and selling. It is not a pretty story and it is one he wants to get out of his mind, but can't. He looks around the playground of his school and believes that Sonny probably tried heroin when he was young, the age of his students.
As he listens to his students' laughter, Sonny's brother realizes that this is not normal child-like laughter- it is mocking, derisive- the kind of laughter.....
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