Derek Driggs's Reviews > Notes of a Native Son

There is no one in any literary canon who speaks to me as well as James Baldwin. He takes deeply fraught, nuanced issues, imbues them first with pathos, and then provides an emotional context that calls the empowered to action and the marginalized to self-love. His commentary on Richard Wright's seminal novel is so spot-on, in the way it recognizes the context that produced the work (and made it important) but also calls out its limitations. Every person (especially every white person) in America should be required to read Baldwin's works in school.

I only recommend reading this if you've had the chance to read Wright first; its effectiveness is somewhat limited to that context.