Going To Meet The Man: The Rockpile; The Outing; The Man Child; Previous Condition; Sonny's Blues (Penguin Modern Classics)
James Baldwin
‘Everyone’s life begins on a level where races, armies, and churches stop. And yet everyone’s life is always shaped by races, churches, and armies’
In these eight extraordinary stories of love, conflict, desperation and fear, James Baldwin shows people trapped by the roles they must play in society, and those who try and escape them.
From the child in ‘The Rockpile’ whose God-fearing father will not forgive his illegitimacy, to the adolescent who hides his sexuality from his community in ‘The Outing’, and from the down-and-out jazz pianist recovering from addiction in ‘Sonny’s Blues’ to the chilling initiation of a racist in ‘Going to Meet the Man’, these tales, first published in 1965, explore the subtle and profound wounds that discrimination leaves – both in its victims and its perpetrators.
‘He uses words as the sea uses waves’ Langston Hughes
'Few, it seems to me, have driven their words with such passion' Guardian
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About James Baldwin
Reviews for Going To Meet The Man: The Rockpile; The Outing; The Man Child; Previous Condition; Sonny's Blues (Penguin Modern Classics)
The Times
His prose emits a long piercing scream as it takes off from the page like a fighter jet on a mission to drop a payload of explosive truths across enemy territory, flying fast and low, risking hostile and friendly fire
Colin Grant
Guardian
The stories carry Baldwin’s depth of sympathy . . . Only a reader with a heart of stone will fail to be moved to tears of recognition, sorrow and joy when ['Sonny's Blues'] reaches its conclusion
Guardian
Praise for James Baldwin
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If Van Gogh was our 19th century artist-saint then James Baldwin is our 20th century one
Michael Ondaatje Baldwin refused to hold anyone’s hand. He was both direct and beautiful all at once. He did not seem to write to convince you. He wrote beyond you
Ta-Nehisi Coates