The photo above was taken by Richard Avedon in 1947, when he was roughly your age, around 23. Baldwin's Wikipedia page is pretty good. This is a good time to remind you that Wikipedia and other crowd-sourced information sites on the internet are great for learning basic things. However, they are still not considered "legit" as scholarly sources because they lack authorial authority. In other words, there is no author and therefore no accountability. Use them as a starting place. Check out the sources at the end of Wikipedia pages for legitimate and scholarly secondary sources.
I clearly remember the first time I read this story in the summer of 1988 in preparation for teaching my first college class, now over thirty years ago. About a year earlier I was fortunate to hear Baldwin lecture at Kenyon College where I was an undergraduate. He was beyond amazing.
Read the story and essay carefully for Tuesday's discussion. In particular, look for patterns of symbolism in Baldwin's magisterial use of language. Nothing is happenstance or random.
There are so many angles of approach to this story. Find your own. Here are some other resources about James Baldwin's life and work.
I Am Not Your Negro (trailer) (film available on NetFlix)
I highly recommend printing out a copy of the pdf and marking it up with your notes and comments. If you choose to read it on your screen, have pen and paper ready to capture quotations that you might use in your essay. His story and his essay are both on the long side. You will need patience. Try to block out enough time to read each in a single reading session (approx 60-90 minutes). You might try to read them with a bebop jazz soundtrack playing lightly in the background. Maybe Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, or Thelonious Monk's Monk's Music. I don't really know if it would be better to read the story before the essay or the essay before the story. Maybe I would suggest reading the story before the essay. "Sonny's Blues" was published in 1957 and "A Letter" in 1962. The choice is yours.
The Final Version of Short Essay Three is due no later than noon on Tuesday, October 20. Upload it to Populi. The draft is due one week from today on October 15. You will need a finished draft for our peer-editing workshop that day. Note: Next Tuesday, we will start class with a ten-minute short answer quiz. Please make sure you do the reading and are prepared to discuss it.
This is a more complicated essay than our first two because we are learning how to incorporate other sources (using MLA format) into the fabric of our own writing. It's not as complicated as it might seem. If you pay close attention, I'm sure you can get it right.
DIRECTIONS for SHORT ESSAY THREE
1) Closely read and think about both the story and one of the essays (the links are on the top of this blog post). This will take some time; many of the essays on "The Electric Typewriter" are much shorter than "Letter from a Region of My Mind."
2) How do Baldwin's words and ideas (now more than 60 years old) connect to what's happening in America in 2020, especially in terms of racial, social, and economic justice? What can we learn from listening to Baldwin and applying his thoughts and ideas to our current situation? These are the questions (and related questions) that should be at the center of your essay.
3) Use at least one quotation from "Sonny's Blues" and one from the essays linked from "The Electric Typewriter" in your essay. This is called "In-text citation," and we're following MLA format (see the blog post underneath this one). You are free to use more than one quotation from these primary sources. Later in the semester, we're going to be working with secondary sources.
4) You will need a simple "Works Cited" section at the end of your paper.
5) We're going to break away from MLA format in one and only one way: We're sticking with the single-spaced two-column format (with a graphic in the top left). Make sure that you have true single-spacing. If you need more room than a single page, feel free to use a second page or shrink your font-size to 10 pt.
6) Remember to give your essay a real title. Don't title it "James Baldwin" or "Essay on James Baldwin."
7) While you can still use your "I, me, my" voice, this essay is more about Baldwin and America in 2020 than it is about you. It's also more formal, so you have less leeway for using casual slang.
8) Revise and edit your final paper carefully before uploading it to Populi.
As always, if you have questions or want to chat, send me an email message at csmith@dcad.edu. I'm also happy to look over your draft before you upload it for next Thursday's class.
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