Everybody’s Protest Novel: Essays
by James Baldwin
Beacon Press (Jun 04, 2024)
Nonfiction, Hardcover, 104 pages
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Description of Everybody’s Protest Novel: Essays by James Baldwin
“I am completely indebted to Jimmy Baldwin’s prose. It liberated me as a writer.”—Toni Morrison
This collectible edition celebrates James Baldwin’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 “Autobiographical Notes,” “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” “Many Thousands Gone,” and “Carmen Jones: The Dark is Light Enough,” showcase Baldwin’s incisive voice as a social and literary critic.
“Autobiographical Notes” outlines Baldwin’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—in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Richard Wright’s novel Native Son, and the 1950s film Carmen Jones—are reduced to digestible caricatures.
Everybody’s Protest Novel: Essays is the first of 3 special editions in the James Baldwin centennial anniversary series. Through this collection, Baldwin examines the fa ade of progress present in the novels of Black oppression. These essays showcase Baldwin’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.

Additional Book Information:
- ISBN: 9780807016947
- Imprint: Beacon Press
- Publisher: Beacon Press
- Parent Company: Unitarian Universalist Association
Books similiar to Everybody’s Protest Novel: Essays may be found in the categories below:
- Literary Collections / American / African American & Black
- Literary Criticism / American / African American & Black
- Social Science / Black Studies (Global)