Sonny's Blues Research Paper
"Sonny's Blues" was first published in a mainstream magazine in 1957 and was collected in Baldwin's 1965 book "Going To Meet The Man". Sonny's Blues" is a short story set in the ghetto of Harlem, NY. James Baldwin wrote "Sonny's Blues" to articulate how the African-American culture enabled countless numbers of Blacks to escape, survive, endure and overcome various types of institutionalized racism and accompanying forms of social, economical and political oppression. African-American culture refers to a particular society at a particular time and place, which expresses and shares a set of learned beliefs, values, tradition, history, arts, religion, food and music. The different forms of the African-American culture gave blacks a sense of belonging.