James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” and literature as a vital song for contemporary times

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2022.1.40623

Keywords:

James Baldwin, Black body, Blues, African American literature, English- language literatures

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide an analysis of the ways in which James Baldwin portrays, in “Sonny’s Blues”, the vulnerability of African American youth when it comes to the U.S. prison system, housing segregation, as well as the War on Drugs. We call the reader’s attention to how young Black men and boys in “Sonny’s Blues” are associated with the “Black-as-criminal” stereotype and victimized by police violence in the United States, which have real consequences in the lives of Black Americans regarding their marginalization and pathologization. Given the aforementioned, the authors present ways in which Baldwin’s literary strategies overcome death, violence, and drug addiction through the uses of the blues, once musicality is turned into a weapon that frees the black body from physical and symbolic annihilation.

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Author Biographies

Jânderson Albino Coswosk, Instituto Federal do Espírito Santo (Ifes), Campus de Alegre, ES, Brasil.

Doutor em Letras/Literaturas de Língua Inglesa pela Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ); mestre em Letras/Literatura, Cultura e Contemporaneidade pela PUC-Rio, no Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil. Professor do Instituto Federal do Espírito Santo (Ifes), Campus de Alegre, ES, Brasil.

Maria Aparecida Andrade Salgueiro, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.

Pós-Doutora UCL, Londres. Orientadora no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras, com atuação no Doutorado e Mestrado em Literaturas de Língua Inglesa e em Literatura Comparada, trabalhando com Literaturas afro-diaspóricas. Pesquisadora: CNPq; Cientista do Nosso Estado/FAPERJ; Procientista. Líder de Grupo de Pesquisa/CNPq. Professora Titular da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), no Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.

References

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Published

2022-05-31

How to Cite

Coswosk, J. A., & Salgueiro, M. A. A. (2022). James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” and literature as a vital song for contemporary times. Letrônica, 15(1), e40623. https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2022.1.40623

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 1 (2022): Single volume

Section

James Baldwin, in the age of black lives matter

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