Beacon Press, Belletristik, Everybody's Protest Novel (Englisch, James Baldwin, 2024)

&ldquo I am completely indebted to Jimmy Baldwin&rsquo s prose. It liberated me as a writer.&rdquo &mdash Toni Morrison This collectible edition celebrates James Baldwin&rsquo s 100th-year anniversary, probing the shortcomings of the American protest novel and the harmful representations of Black identity in film and fiction Originally published in Notes of a Native Son, the essays &ldquo Autobiographical Notes,&rdquo &ldquo Everybody&rsquo s Protest Novel,&rdquo &ldquo Many Thousands Gone,&rdquo and &ldquo Carmen Jones: The Dark is Light Enough,&rdquo showcase Baldwin&rsquo s incisive voice as a social and literary critic. &ldquo Autobiographical Notes&rdquo outlines Baldwin&rsquo s journey as a Black writer and his hesitant transition from fiction to nonfiction. In the following essays, Baldwin explores the Black experience through the lens of popular media, critiquing the ways in which Black characters&mdash in Harriet Beecher Stowe&rsquo s novel Uncle Tom&rsquo s Cabin, Richard Wright&rsquo s novel Native Son, and the 1950s film Carmen Jones&mdash are reduced to digestible caricatures. Everybody&rsquo s Protest Novel: Essays is the first of 3 special editions in the James Baldwin centennial anniversary series. Through this collection, Baldwin examines the faç ade of progress present in the novels of Black oppression. These essays showcase Baldwin&rsquo s profound ability to reveal the truth of the Black experience, exposing the failure of the protest novel, and the state of racial reckoning at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement.