SOURCE: "'Sonny's Blues': James Baldwin's Image of Black Community," in Negro American Literature Forum, Vol. 4, No. 2, July, 1970, pp. 56-60.

In the following essay, which is generally regarded as among the most influential treatments of "Sonny's Blues, " Reilly examines Baldwin's sympathetic evocation of black community.

A critical commonplace holds that James Baldwin writes better essays than he does fiction or drama; nevertheless, his leading theme—the discovery of identity—is nowhere presented more successfully than in the short story "Sonny's Blues." Originally published in Partisan Review in 1957 and reprinted in the collection of stories Going to Meet the Man in 1965, "Sonny's Blues" not only states dramatically the motive for Baldwin's famous polemics in the cause of Black freedom, but it also provides an esthetic linking his work, in all literary genres, with the cultures of the Black ghetto.

The fundamental movement of "Sonny's Blues" represents the slow accommodation of...