I am completely indebted to Jimmy Baldwins prose. It liberated me as a writer.Toni Morrison

This collectible edition celebrates James Baldwins 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 Autobiographical Notes, Everybodys Protest Novel, Many Thousands Gone, and Carmen Jones: The Dark is Light Enough, showcase Baldwins incisive voice as a social and literary critic.

Autobiographical Notes outlines Baldwins 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 charactersin Harriet Beecher Stowes novel Uncle Toms Cabin, Richard Wrights novel Native Son, and the 1950s film Carmen Jonesare reduced to digestible caricatures.

Everybodys Protest Novel: Essays is the first of 3 special editions in the James Baldwin centennial anniversary series. Through this collection, Baldwin examines the faade of progress present in the novels of Black oppression. These essays showcase Baldwins 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.