In a time of exhausting ignorance surrounding the Black struggle, James Baldwin created a story to be universally acknowledged and considered. Following the end of World War II, many Black soldiers returned to their homes, greeted not by abundant employment opportunities or equal rights, but rather housing slums in poor neighborhoods and oppressive coldness. In “Sonny’s Blues,” Baldwin seemingly gives us a choice to sympathize with an abandoned Black man. How could Sonny fall into this predictable but avoidable trap? He’s smart. He’s good. Yet, when we learn about his suffering and his familiar betrayal and his essential exile, the choice dissipates. In fact, it never existed. Sonny is no longer a mistake, a consequence of an escapable fate. As he enters the narrator’s active life, he becomes a person—all the bits of Sonny that lay scattered and sharp in the narrator’s mind begin to fit together, like a heavily worn and mistreated puzzle. Once we understand the puzzle is to be interpreted as a unique piece of art, it is presented to us hazily, and it does not form a remotely discernible image until the story’s end. But for the narrator, the puzzle is a Rorschach test. What he sees in Sonny is the offspring of his own close-mindedness. And this is exactly the communal experience of being Black in America. All too often do less-than-welcoming non-Black people see in us what they want to. The darkness of our complexion is the darkness in the world in the eyes of the spitefully ignorant. Baldwin assumed the difficult position of evoking in his audience the tricky feeling of universal compassion. And he succeeds. Through the usage of Black characters (as opposed to white and Black characters), this call to compassion feels less confrontational for white audiences and more relatable to Black audiences. Sonny’s suffering becomes symbolic of the pressure anyone can fall victim to. This story feels exclusive to the Black experience, but what makes it remarkable is its universality.  

James Baldwin has done with his words what Sonny does with music: he expresses a sorrowful truth. Though written and spoken language often feel like the easiest and most universal methods of communication, this story poignantly expresses that sorrow and suffering shake us so deeply, it resonates in our souls far deeper than the pull of language can reach. We will never know Sonny’s whole truth. We will never know the narrator’s whole truth. The narrator is inaccessible. What feelings he cannot sort through, what he cannot put into words, is what we will never learn about him. And what thoughts and feelings Sonny cannot (or will not) surface is what the narrator will never understand. But Baldwin’s pen is Sonny’s piano. There is an intentional and inaccessible depth hidden in his writing, but what is important to understand is that Baldwin, the narrator, and Sonny have all suffered. They fought to survive in tumultuous, drowning waters, but they swam. They do not want our pity or our empty, lost-for-words utterances of condolences. They want us to know that they know their struggles are valid, and that they are ordinarily and extraordinarily human.  

This is a wonderful story that summarizes what is so uniquely Black about jazz music and the blues. This is the origin story of jazz without explicitly being so. Baldwin has a great way of creating focuses without explicitly offering them. The story is about familiar love and the importance of being accepted by your family (whether that family is blood or chosen), yet I have been able to write almost three pages now without having mentioned that specifically, let alone the motifs, themes, and symbols. But what made this story resonate with me is the importance of community. I have always embraced so many unique yet fragmented aspects of my personality, so it has always been hard for me to find a solid support system that accepts me entirely. And though I doubt I will ever experience the horrors Sonny has (I certainly cannot even pretend to understand his life now), I know the gut-wrenching pain of suffering in silence. I know the hopelessness it evokes, and I can understand why it would drive someone to do something drastically uncharacteristic. But on the other hand, I understand the feeling of community—a true community of people with shared interests, beliefs, and desires to see each other’s best. Whether through pieces of suffering or of pure joy, through great minds and shared feelings, a sense of belonging can evoke in us something nothing else is able to.