Separate In Body But One In Mind

Growing up in the rough streets of Harlem, James Baldwin learned to grow up faster than many. Experiences he faced shaped his views that made him into one of the most iconic writers to date. As a young black boy, he grew up with many older siblings, 8 to be exact. His father, a local preacher, shared his enthusiasm and belief that all men are created equal with Baldwin. But also shared his spite for the white man, thinking all whites were out for no good. He took these ideas and projected them into his writings to share. Even as a teenager, Baldwin would write about the civil rights movement. Yet regardless, racism is sometimes inevitable and James Baldwin has always kept a strong, open mind. Revealing every man, skin color aside is equal. But I want to take a closer look at how Baldwin took these life experiences and projected his equal views about man into his writings. Proving that color doesn’t make a man, the man inside determines the outcome.

The first essay I wanted to read was “Notes of A Native Son” because of how many good things I had heard about it. It describes his childhood growing up as a Negro boy in Harlem. Educated by a white teacher, whom by the way his parents weren’t too happy about. He liked his teacher in though, despite his parent’s negativity. As resentful as his parents were, the only reason they didn’t pull him out was because he was getting a decent education. At the time, he wasn’t aware why exactly his father was so disapproving. One New York Times author Langston Hughes said,” When the young man who wrote this book comes to a point where he can look at life purely as himself, and for himself, the color of his skin mattering not at all, when, as in his own words, he finds "his birthright as a man no ...

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...glasses on and look at things from a less fortunate point of view, it really is an out of body experience every time I read his work.

Through the bad times of growing up in the deprived streets of Harlem, to traveling the world in search of new experiences to broaden his goals of become a literature genius. Making dozens of hit stories, essays and poems James Baldwin is regarded to as the Martin Luther King Jr. with his inspirational words. Expressing new optional boundaries for man to contemplate, regarding the equality of man. Despite everything, James Baldwin has been able to step outside the racial box and write from views other than the African American. By stepping out of body to see things from a different view, it gave not only Baldwin incite on other views, but also the reader. Proving that color doesn’t make a man, the man inside determines the outcome.