James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues"

Abstract A close reading of the form and essence of Baldwin’s famous short story and of its inspiration rooted in Baldwin’s experience of racial injustice in America, his youth in Harlem, his witnessing of the effects of heroin addiction on a generation of his peers, his experience and understanding of the consolations and limits of religious practice, his transcendent embodiment of jazz as an element in the story, and, overall, the profound, world-wide influence the story has had in transforming perspectives on race and in creating greater sympathy and human harmony across the more than a half century in which the story has been read by many millions of people and been standard assigned reading in secondary and higher education classrooms.