One of my personal favorites, as the subject matter resonates deeply with me. However, the other short stories in the collection didn’t leave the same impact, so I can’t rate the book as a whole any higher than 3.5 stars.
Sonny's Blues
Sonny’s Blues is a beautifully written love letter to jazz. To me, jazz is the genre that best reflects human nature and life itself. It is imperfect, spontaneous, and deeply felt. Like life, jazz doesn’t follow a neat resolution; it loops, it improvises, it embraces chaos.
Maybe that’s why Baldwin’s story stuck with me so much. It follows a Harlem schoolteacher who, after learning of his younger brother Sonny’s arrest for heroin possession, is forced to confront their estranged relationship. He struggles to understand Sonny’s choices, especially his devotion to jazz, which he sees as part of a reckless, unstable life.
But what he doesn’t realize (and what so many don’t realize) is that jazz isn’t what leads Sonny—or other jazz artists for that matter—down a dangerous path. It’s what keeps him afloat. The drugs, the struggles, the streets: those are mere responses to pain. Jazz, if anything, is his salvation.
The narrator doesn’t see that at first. To him, jazz is the very thing that pulled Sonny under—an escape from reality rather than a way to face it. But Sonny doesn’t play to run away; he plays to confront. Through music, he gives his suffering shape, turning chaos into something real, something he can control.
When the narrator finally listens to Sonny play at the nightclub, he sees it. For the first time, he listens. He sees his brother not as someone who lost his way, but as someone who found his own way to survive. Jazz isn’t just music for Sonny—it’s the only thing that allows him to exist in a world that keeps trying to crush him.
I think maybe that’s why jazz feels so human to me. Like life, it doesn’t resolve neatly. It loops, it improvises, it embraces chaos. But in doing so, it gives meaning to things that might otherwise feel meaningless. It takes pain and turns it into something beautiful—something that, if only for a moment, makes us feel understood. The world would be a better place if we all just listened...
"No, there's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it, to keep on top of it, and to make it seem—well, like you. Like you did something, all right, and now you're suffering for it. You know?"
I said nothing.
"Well you know," he said, impatiently, "Why do people suffer? Maybe it's better to do something to give it a reason, any reason."
"But we just agreed," I said, "that there's no way not to suffer. Isn't it better, then, just to take it?"
"But nobody just takes it," Sonny cried, "that's what I'm telling you—everybody tries not to. You're just hung up on the way some people try—it's not your way."
The Rockpile, Previous Condition, Going to Meet the Man...
Honestly, I didn’t love the other stories as much. I think even Sonny's Blues was carried by its subject matter more than anything else. James Baldwin is obviously an incredibly talented writer—his ability to bring everyday life to the page and dissect the realities of racism is undeniable. But for me, the other stories in the collection fell flat. They felt one-dimensional, with messages that seemed surface-level, often relying too heavily on racial identity without much deeper exploration.