Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin

Sonny's Blues Reviews

• 
  Adrian

  I guess Sonny's Blues is OK if you like that sort of thing. In this case, that sort of thing being nearly perfectly crafted fiction. That sort of thing being a story that's so universal and so timeless that it can be felt by any and everybody on the face of the earth. This sort of thing being the kind of story every writer should be aspiring to write before his or her days on this earth are through. Baldwin is simply the most amazing person I've never known, and if I don't read every single word he's ever put on paper before my life is over, my entire life will have been a supreme failure.
  
  Again, as with Giovanni's Room, the story itself is completely secondary and deceptively simple. It's about two bothers and the manner in which they lose touch due to the younger brother's drug addiction and then reconnect and gain mutual understanding through Jazz. It's this last element that makes Sonny's Blues so wonderfully transcendent because Baldwin understands Jazz in a manner that I don't think anyone else in the world ever has. At the very least, he explains it in a manner that will leave no one confused as to the art form's meaning and purpose. Jazz is pain and suffering given rhythm and sound; Jazz is life given melody. And it is simply not possible to read the final passages of this story and not understand that; not feel it in the deepest reaches of your being. There is music in those final paragraphs. Baldwin writes of the experience of listening to his brother play in a manner that leaves you feeling like you could be in a Jazz bar yourself, or at a poetry slam, or sitting in the audience of the most passionate one man show in existence. His writing is poetic, moving, and magical. There's even a feeling of the preacher in the pulpit during those sections. If you read it and don't have tears in your eyes, I'm not sure I want to know you.
  
  Of course there's more to the story than even just that; it wouldn't be Baldwin if there weren't. There's themes about how irrevocably we are changed by the places in which we've grown up and the places we've been (both physically and mentally). Themes about how things never really change in this world and in this country especially. Themes about how a parent's life long pain can be hidden from their children but still affect their lives in the long run. It's the question about whether or not things ever fully change that I find to be most interesting. Living in this 2013 world in which a young black man was recently murdered for wearing a hoodie and walking down the street and his white murderer gets away with it facing no punishment whatsoever leaves me wondering if we've actually changed at all from the 1957 world in which the story was published. A story that features a young black man being run down by a car driven by four white men who all get away with it. What Sonny said about himself applies to us as a nation: "nothing had changed, I hadn't changed, I was just older."
• 
  mwana

  I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?

  I have never read James Baldwin's fiction before. How lucky am I? How much more fortunate am I that this is my first interaction.
  
  If you ask many people who is the greatest author who ever lived, there are names you won't miss. Tolstoy, Dickens, Morrison, Baldwin. After reading this short story, I can see why. Sonny's Blues follows the journey of two brothers. Our narrator and his brother, Sonny.
  
  Every theme you'd want explored in a novel is touched on in these pages. There's an unavoidable philosophizing about the cyclic nature of life. About how some people are sealed to certain fates simply because of their identity and their geography. Our narrator is a math teacher. He hears news about Sonny getting caught with heroin. This means Sonny will end up in rehab. It gives our narrator great anxiety.

  A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra. It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. Sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream.

  When our narrator contemplates the fact that Sonny's fate could easily become his students' he almost accepts the inevitability of it.

  ...it happened and here I was, talking about algebra to a lot of boys who might, everyone of them for all I knew, be popping off needles every time they went to the head. Maybe it did more for them than algebra could.

  Sonny started using when he was just slightly older than these boys. These kids were getting meaner, surlier, as though the upcoming exposure to adulthood and vulnerability made them feel like they needed chemical crutches to help them escape it. Hell, they were probably knee-deep in problems them. Our narrator's mother tells him to look out for Sonny. Not because Sonny was showing the tell-tale signs of a problem child but because ...you got a brother. And the world ain't changed.
  
  Suffering is inevitable and I wish people wouldn't glorify strife and even look forward to it. But, there's no way not to suffer. Sonny hates this key ingredient of the human condition. It's repulsive to think you have to suffer than much.
  
  There's something to be said for going away and thinking you'll come back a changed man. For Sonny, When I came back, nothing had changed, I hadn't changed, I was just--older. Eventually, what saves Sonny or seems to give him a lifeline, is his music, his blues. All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. The narrator explains Sonny's conversations with his instruments, his story with the notes and the keys until eventually they harmonize and those listening bear witness to two old friends uniting. The relationship between our narrator and his brother can be saved if only he can learn to sit and listen to Sonny's soul. And perhaps the world would be a much peaceful place if our elders would just listen.
• 
  Jon Nakapalau

  Powerful and deeply moving story of two brothers trying to come to terms with their relationship amidst crime, drug abuse and potential wasted. Baldwin is one of the most brutally honest writers I have ever encountered - he is also extremely prophetic in his ability to see past the failure of policies that have worsened the plight of African Americans. Highest recommended.
• 
  Duane

  This review probably contains spoilers.
  
  It's the 1950's in Harlem, and times are hard for two young men , brothers, who have lost their parents and are now trying to find their own way in life, separately, with differing ideas about how to go about it, but still connected, as brothers are everywhere. The younger brother, Sonny, knows he has to escape Harlem to live the kind of life he wants. He loves music, Jazz and Blues, and he wants to earn his way in life doing what he loves. His older brother, the unnamed narrator, let's call him James, is a teacher, and he is more conservative. He thinks Sonny is making a bad choice, one that will lead to failure, or worse. Also, James feels guilty because he promised their mother he would look out for Sonny, but Sonny slips away, slips into the life he always dreamed of.
  
  Baldwin's vision of life for these two brothers is not a pretty one, and I'm sure it reflects his own struggles about family and future. What he shows us in this story is that life's struggles can be overcome, and the bonds of family, of brotherhood, are never really lost, and that something like music can be the catalyst that brings us together, and heal the wounds of life.
• 
  Corinne

  I finished reading last night... the story goes straight to your heart, well written..
• 
  Brian Yahn

  James Baldwin reminds us that childhood isn't rife with happiness like everyone else paints it, that--for most--life isn't a fairy-tale, but far from it. Sonny's Blues is so real it should come with a warning label.
• 
  Shirin T.

  مویه های سانی، دومین داستان از داستان های کوتاه جهان (۱۴) محافظ دوشیزگان
  مترجم محمد علی مهمان نوازان
  
  سانی
  یکی از پسرهای محله هارلم
  یکی از آنهای که با شتاب داشتند بزرگ میشدند و سرهاشان یک مرتبه به سقف کوتاه امکانات حقیقی شان اصابت میکرد.
  
  روایتی تاثیرگذار و زیبا با قلمی گیرا، من هم مانند برادر سانی احساس کردم اگر شرایط بگونه دیگری بود مثل بچه ها زیر گریه میزدم.
• 
  Hiba⁷

  I can't believe I'm giving four 🌟 for a book I had to read for school. But wonders can happen!
  This story is about two brothers, a wannabe musician and a maths teacher, the first is a heroin addict, the second is in good shape. What I liked about this book is the message it transmits, and that one should not feel guilty upon thinking that one didn't protect his loved ones well enough, because honestly? No matter how you try you cannot completely protect them, but you can let them know you're there for them though.
  Such a beautiful writing style also.
• 
  Dag

  Because I've read this excerpt I want to read the whole book: "All I know about music is that not many people really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours.
  
  I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything.
  
  He hit something in me, myself, and the music tightened and deepened, apprehension began to beat the air. [He:] began to tell us what the blues were all about. They were not about anything very new. He and his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.
  
  I seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, with what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting. Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did."
  
• 
  Connie G

  "Sonny's Blues" is a deeply emotional short story about two African American brothers at several points in their lives. The narrator is the more traditional man who works as a high school algebra teacher in Harlem. The younger brother, Sonny, has done jail time for heroin sales. Sonny feels things very deeply and finds an escape from suffering in contemporary jazz. Sonny's brother is grieving after the death of a family member. When the narrator goes to Sonny's jazz club to hear Sonny play the blues, the brothers reach an emotional understanding. It's through the melancholy music that Sonny is able to transform his suffering into something beautiful and meaningful.
  
  The 1957 short story incorporates music, religion, grief, addiction, and the pain of poverty in Harlem into its plot. James Baldwin's writing just blew me away with its memorable moments - when their mother revealed their tragic family history, when a revival choir sings "That Old Ship of Zion," and when Sonny and his friends play the blues.
• 
  Paula Mota

  “Let’s play catch”, I said.
  But she held the ball and made a face at me.
  “My mother don’t let me play with niggers”, she told me.
  I did not know what the word meant. But my skin grew warm. I stuck my tongue out at her.
  
  Em três contos a raiar a perfeição, James Baldwin prova que se pode falar de tensão racial e de conflitos familiares num sussurro, que as mensagens nem sempre precisam de ser berradas para surtirem efeito. A verdadeira literatura é subtil.
  
  Sonny’s Blues – 4*
  The Rockpile – 5*
  Previous Condition – 5*
  
  “You the man of the house, you supposed to look after your baby brothers and sisters – and you supposed to let them run off and get half killed. But I expect, “she added, rising from the chair, dropping the cardboard fan, “your Daddy’ll make you tell the truth.”
  
• 
  allison

  Achingly beautiful and fantastically written. What I love most about this short story is how well this can be adapted into so many lives and how painful any kind of addiction can be and how tragic and life-changing it is to overcome it. It caught me off guard, how much I felt for Sonny, and how much I truly enjoyed it.
• 
  B. P. Rinehart

  Empathy through suffering and
  the blues. This short story is some of the best elements of Baldwin's fiction used to convey the central themes that he wrote about. Though I feel that his best writing is his non-fiction (something he always disagreed with), he is still one of the great fiction writers of his generation. This was a short story that would have made
  Anton Chekhov proud with its depth and feel for humanity as represented by the two brothers. James Baldwin's ability to re-create Harlem is second only to
  James Joyce's ability to re-create Dublin.
  
  "He hopes that there will never come a time when the old folks won't be sitting around the living room, talking about where they've come from, and what they've seen, and what's happened to them and their kinfolk.
  
  But something deep and watchful in the child knows that this is bound to end, is already ending. In a moment someone will get up and turn on the light. Then the old folks will remember the children and they won't talk any more that day. And when light fills the room, the child is filled with darkness. He knows that every time this happens he's moved just a little closer to that darkness outside. The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It's what they've come from. It's what they endure. The child knows that they won't talk any more because if he knows too much about what's happened to them, he'll know too much too soon, about what's going to happen to him."
  
  The nameless protagonist tells the story of his brother and really his whole family. It is non-linear (showing that the magical realists did not have a monopoly on that in the post-war) and it is a distinctly urban tale. Harlem lives in this story and it is a key character in this story, but the journey of the brothers away from each other and back to each other is the heart of this tale. One had to recognize the pain of the other ("My trouble made his real."), and the other had to be willing to be ready to forgive. The protagonist and Sonny's reconciliation does not complete itself until they are in the jazz club (one of the most brilliant passages in 20th century fiction), but when it happens it brings the story to a unified whole.
  
  "Then it was over. Creole and Sonny let out their breath, both soaking wet, and grinning. There was a lot of applause and some of it was real. In the dark, the girl came by and I asked her to take drinks to the bandstand. There was a long pause, while they talked up there in the indigo light and after awhile I saw the girl put a Scotch and milk on top of the piano for Sonny. He didn't seem to notice it, but just before they started playing again, he sipped from it and looked toward me, and nodded. Then he put it back on top of the piano. For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling."
• 
  Charlie Miller

  An incredibly touching piece of writing, beautifully executed
• 
  Edita

  I couldn’t believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn’t find any room for it anywhere inside me. I had kept it outside me for a long time. I hadn’t wanted to know.
  *
  Well, the word had never before sounded as heavy, as real, as it sounded that afternoon [...]
  *
  [...] it was as though he were all wrapped up in some cloud, some fire, some vision all his own; and there wasn't any way to reach him.
  *
  And then there are some who just live, really, in hell, and they know it and they see what's happening and they go right on.
  *
  I wanted to say more, but I couldn't. I wanted to talk about will power and how life could be - well, beautiful. I wanted to say that it was all within; but was it? or, rather, wasn't that exactly the trouble? And I wanted to promise that I would never fail him again. But it would all have sounded - empty words and lies.
  *
  "It's terrible sometimes, inside," he said, "that's what's the trouble. You walk these streets, black and funky and cold, and there's not really a living ass to talk to, and there's nothing shaking, and there's no way of getting it out- that storm inside. You can't talk it and you can't make love with it, and when you finally try to get with it and play it, you realize nobody's listening. So you've got to listen. You got to find a way to listen."
  *
  
  [...] and I thought I'd die if I couldn't get away from it and yet, all the same, I knew that everything I was doing was just locking me in with it.
  *
  [...] as I covertly studied Sonny's face, it came to me that what we both were seeking through our separate cab windows was that part of ourselves which had been left behind. It's always at the hour of trouble and confrontation that the missing member aches.
  *
  And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.
  *
  You get so used to being hit you find you're always waiting for it.
• 
  Kamil

  No one writes about music and solitude as Baldwin does.
• 
  Jood

  One of the best stories I've ever read this year. If you haven't cried while reading it, there must be something wrong with you.
• 
  Antonis Giannoulis

  3 μικρά διηγήματα με ιδιαιτερο ύφος και ταυτότητα . Η ιστορία του Σοννυ ξεχωρίζει και δίνει μια ταυτότητα σε αυτά . Μια πρώτη γνωριμία για μενα με την γραφή του πιο δημοφιλούς μαύρου συγγραφέα της γενιάς του που σίγουρα θα ανακαλύψω στο μελλον.
• 
  Jeanne

  Sonny's Blues begins with the unnamed narrator discovering that his brother has been picked up for using and selling heroin.

  I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. I read it, and I couldn't believe it, and I read it again. Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out his name, spelling out the story. I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside.
  
  It was not to be believed and I kept telling myself that, as I walked from the subway station to the high school. And at the same time I couldn't doubt it. I was scared, scared for Sonny. He became real to me again. A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra. It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. Sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream. This would always be at a moment when I was remembering some specific thing Sonny had once said or done. (p. 49)

  The narrator talked about Sonny's arrest with a childhood friend, also someone who has abused drugs. The friend said: "Ain't nothing you can do. Can't much help old Sonny no more, I guess" – then immediately turned this around, "Funny thing... when I saw the papers this morning, the first thing I asked myself was if I had anything to do with it. I felt sort of responsible" (p. 51).
  
  This question about responsibility is a common one when it comes to family and friends' struggles. We often attribute blame solely to the addict, but Baldwin asks us to think more broadly, both in terms of individual and community trauma that leads to maladaptive coping ("It ain't only the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that gets sucked under", p. 56), but also the ways that we can save each other without being enabling or codependent. Baldwin suggests that we can't be separated from our larger context, even when we attempt to leave it: Those who got out always left something of themselves behind, as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap (p. 54). That context can save us.
  
  Although this story is ostensibly about Sonny, I was most curious about the narrator and his courage in coming to trust Sonny, listen to him, and let him be himself. I liked his reflective voice, that he himself was open to change, and that this was a process, one not one that was much easier than that which Sonny was going through.
  
  This is the second piece of Baldwin's that I've read this month. What impressed me about both this and Go Tell It On the Mountain was Baldwin's skill with dialogue, but also his ability to describe wordless experiences – like his descriptions of spiritual conversions in Mountain and jazz and relationships here:

  Up there, keeping the beat with his whole body, wailing on the fiddle, with his eyes half closed, he was listening to everything, but he was listening to Sonny. He was having a dialogue with Sonny. He wanted Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out for the deep water. He was Sonny's witness that deep water and drowning were not the same thing–he had been there, and he knew. And he wanted Sonny to know. He was waiting for Sonny to do the things on the keys which would let Creole know that Sonny was in the water. (p. 67-68)

  Baldwin's use of language is beautiful and leaves me feeling awkward, tongue-tied, struggling to describe his writings.
  
  I read this story as part of GR's Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) short story challenge.
• 
  Brian

  Title story: What an astounding piece of literature. I'm shocked.
• 
  Daren

  Three short stories about life in Harlem for young black children. Other reviewers have pointed to the 1950's which seems right with situations described - eg mention of horse and cart deliveries, motor cars, the evolved state of jazz ("Like Louis Armstrong?"... "No. I'm not talking about none of that old-time, down-home crap.")
  
  These are not happy memory stories, they are hard times. Themes include disconnection (and reconnection) of family, drugs, jazz, parental relationship / control of children, societal disconnection.
  
  Well written, realistic and atmospheric - great description in these short, easy to read stories.
  
  Four stars.
• 
  Rachel Nicole Wagner

  4.5/5 Stars.
  
  I really like the writing style of James Baldwin and I enjoyed the emotional journey I was transported on through this story.
  
  
  
• 
  Yasna

  "For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness."
• 
  Matt

  
  I loved the story the first couple of times I read it, then fell more deeply in love with it when I taught it three or four times. At places a little over-written, at times a bit dated, but all in all it's a masterpiece.
• 
  Vivian Chen (Vivian's Book Pavilion)

  This is post originally on Vivian's Book Pavilion Literature Page
  
  After I finished this story…I immediately compared it with Everyday Use by Alice Walker, I can’t help but associate the brothers with Dee and Maggie. The narrator wasn’t exactly the same as Dee, but in some way, they share the same situation. During their time, the inequality between black and white was easily seen. The narrator choose to blend in, that was his way of survive. On the contrary, Sonny decided to become a musician, yet not a classic musician, but a jazz player. They faced their life differently, and the story was about the conflict between the lives they chose. A really love those literature work, they always gave you hint about the story plot. For example, Araby (Arabia), A Rose for Emily (Well…you know my crazy theory) and a lot of examples for that. Now, Sonny’s Blues. There are different meanings for blues, yet all of them fit for the explanation. First, the Blues in music. In the past, Jazz and Blues are considered as “black music” (I’m not sure if I described it right or not…but…sort of.) They weren’t accept by the classical music, and ignored for a long time. Blues and Jazz are a mix of traditional African culture and American culture, a way for them to express their feelings. And in the story, Sonny expressed his passion for life through the music, and it met perfectly. Besides music, as readers all know that blue also means depression and anxiety those negative emotions, and throughout the story, Sonny did suffer them all. From drug to his conflict with the narrator, or his life in the army…
• 
  Stacy-Ann

  This is a really powerful book in which everyone should read. The story opens with the narrator, who reads about his younger brother named Sonny who has been caught in a heroin..... its a great very short read book.
• 
  ellie

  I wrote an essay about this last year, so it's safe to say it made an impression on me.
• 
  Taija

  I read this short story over a few sittings, taking my time. I would have given this story 5 stars, but the story had three too many "it's" (18 on the first page alone, and that drives me crazy!). I was told in high school English, as well as university, that we were not to use the word "it." So now naturally, when I read a published writer, I automatically zone in on that one word, that, and the word "thing."
  
  That aside, this was a story about how humans deal with the "deep darkness," or the "terrible"ness of our insides, how humans ache and suffer. Here are a few of my favourite lines from the story:
  
  

  These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness... - pg. 11
  
  "You mean - they'll let him out. And then he'll just start working his way back in again. You mean he'll never kick the habit. Is that what you mean?"
  "That's right," he said cheerfully. "You see what I mean."
  "Tell me," I said at last, "why does he want to die? He must want to die, he's killing himself, why does he want to die?"
  He looked at me in surprise. He licked his lips. "He don't want to die. He wants to live. Don't nobody ever want to die."-pg. 14
  
  "It's terrible sometimes, inside," he said, "that's what's the trouble. You walk these streets, black and funky and cold, and there's not really a living ass to talk to, and there's nothing shaking, and there's no way of getting it out - that storm inside. You can't talk it and you can't make love with it, and when you finally try to get with it and play it, you realize nobody's listening. So you've got to listen. You got to find a way to listen." -pg. 29
  
  The dry, low, black man said something awful on the drums, Creole answered, and the drums talked back. Then the horn insisted, sweet and high, slightly detached perhaps, and Creole listened, commenting now and then, dry, and driving, beautiful and calm and old. - pg. 32