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frankiereadstoomuch's review
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Required reading for a literature class
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Addiction, Child death, Racial slurs, Drug abuse, Classism, Violence, Body horror, Grief, Racism, and Hate crime
bibliorama's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
James Baldwin is a great writer and he makes it easy to fall into the narrative of each short story. You know it's interesting when it has me googling articles for the summaries and meanings to each story like I'm back in school. I can tell this one will get better upon rereads.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Murder, Death, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Racism, and Violence
Moderate: Child death, Cursing, and Addiction
ellareads2's review
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This collection was absolutely beautiful! It was the first time I've completed a work by Baldwin and I am excited to finish the rest of his fiction works this summer. Here is my ranking of the short stories because I do not feel that my overall star rating does justice to what I really thought of each story:
1. The Outing
2. Previous Condition
3. The Rockpile
4. The Man Child
5. This Morning, This Evening, So Soon
6. Sonny's Blues
7. Come Out the Wilderness
8. Going to Meet the Man (MAJOR TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNING FOR LYNCHING)
What I like most about "The Outing" is how close to home it feels. Baldwin perfectly captures what it's like to grow up in the Church around very religious people and feel all that shame, guilt, and trauma even as a child. Along with these religious power dynamics, he also explores how this intersects with gender and age within the congregation. I love the descriptions of male intimacy-whether platonic or romantic it could be read-between the two boys Johnnie and David. These boys, as well as their friend Roy, do not buy the narrative of salvation that others around them do. But Johnnie, being the preacher's son and living and breathing this religion, still desires the great love and intimacy all the worshippers around him display during the service on the boat. It is a beautiful scene that Johne observes, but he is not truly apart of. I felt that as a queer person with religious trauma, the seamless parallels Baldwin makes are very powerful.
*full review will be on blog*
1. The Outing
2. Previous Condition
3. The Rockpile
4. The Man Child
5. This Morning, This Evening, So Soon
6. Sonny's Blues
7. Come Out the Wilderness
8. Going to Meet the Man (MAJOR TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNING FOR LYNCHING)
What I like most about "The Outing" is how close to home it feels. Baldwin perfectly captures what it's like to grow up in the Church around very religious people and feel all that shame, guilt, and trauma even as a child. Along with these religious power dynamics, he also explores how this intersects with gender and age within the congregation. I love the descriptions of male intimacy-whether platonic or romantic it could be read-between the two boys Johnnie and David. These boys, as well as their friend Roy, do not buy the narrative of salvation that others around them do. But Johnnie, being the preacher's son and living and breathing this religion, still desires the great love and intimacy all the worshippers around him display during the service on the boat. It is a beautiful scene that Johne observes, but he is not truly apart of. I felt that as a queer person with religious trauma, the seamless parallels Baldwin makes are very powerful.
*full review will be on blog*
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture, Murder, and Violence
Moderate: Sexual content, Car accident, Hate crime, and Racial slurs
Minor: Abortion and Slavery
asililydying's review
3.75
Sonny's Blues and Previous Condition are my favorites, Going To Meet The Man itself as a story may be the most disgusting thing I have ever read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation, Confinement, Death, Grief, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Torture, Child death, Drug abuse, Rape, Sexism, Child abuse, Cursing, Deportation, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexual violence, Hate crime, Murder, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Classism, Religious bigotry, Terminal illness, Violence, Gore, Racism, and Genocide
micha_reads's review
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.75
The first couple of stories were pretty slow and I had trouble connecting with the religious themes. The other stories were quite different, with complex and conflicted characters. Really happy to have gotten such a wide sampling of Baldwin's work as I had only read two of his novels before.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Hate crime, Murder, Sexism, Police brutality, and Racism
tenten's review
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
many thoughts. i had to let them marinate for a bit. obviously a five star read cus this is Baldwin but i was quite blown away. i've read "Sonny's Blues" before and it was amazing but i never got around to reading more short stories by him.
first thing: he is so good at writing homoeroticism and repressed gay sadness. sheesh. "The Outing" was so good and honestly i didn't expect the gayness so it was a pleasant surprise. with that one and "The Rockpile," i believe Baldwin drew from his own childhood and his strained relationship with his father (like Johnny, he was the eldest son, from his mom's previous 'days in sin' and his father had some resentment towards him for that) so the emotions in those two really felt real.
second thing: there were passages in this book that legit made me think, "why do people even still write about Black-white race relations in the US? everything that could be said has already been said by Baldwin or Morrison." and i know that sounds mean but like. truly. a lot of writing about race in the US that has come out in the past, like, 15 years just feels elementary to me because a lot of it has already been said and better. sorry ðŸ˜
between "Come out the Wilderness" and If Beale Street Could Talk, his representation of women doesn't WOW me so far. it's not bad but it's not perfect. "write what you know" was definitely Baldwin's strong suit...though Going to Meet the Man, which is in the perspective of a racist white deputy sheriff during the Civil Rights movement, was really powerful, so it really just might be that his women needed work. with the exception of the wife in "Going to Meet the Man," they're all quite neurotic and their interior lives are almost exclusively taken up by the men in their lives.
fave stories:
- The Outing
- The Man Child
- Sonny's Blues
- This Morning, This Evening, So Soon
truly always itching to read more from him!
first thing: he is so good at writing homoeroticism and repressed gay sadness. sheesh. "The Outing" was so good and honestly i didn't expect the gayness so it was a pleasant surprise. with that one and "The Rockpile," i believe Baldwin drew from his own childhood and his strained relationship with his father (like Johnny, he was the eldest son, from his mom's previous 'days in sin' and his father had some resentment towards him for that) so the emotions in those two really felt real.
second thing: there were passages in this book that legit made me think, "why do people even still write about Black-white race relations in the US? everything that could be said has already been said by Baldwin or Morrison." and i know that sounds mean but like. truly. a lot of writing about race in the US that has come out in the past, like, 15 years just feels elementary to me because a lot of it has already been said and better. sorry ðŸ˜
between "Come out the Wilderness" and If Beale Street Could Talk, his representation of women doesn't WOW me so far. it's not bad but it's not perfect. "write what you know" was definitely Baldwin's strong suit...though Going to Meet the Man, which is in the perspective of a racist white deputy sheriff during the Civil Rights movement, was really powerful, so it really just might be that his women needed work. with the exception of the wife in "Going to Meet the Man," they're all quite neurotic and their interior lives are almost exclusively taken up by the men in their lives.
fave stories:
- The Outing
- The Man Child
- Sonny's Blues
- This Morning, This Evening, So Soon
truly always itching to read more from him!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Hate crime, and Racism
seawarrior's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This short story collection presents moments of revelation for a variety of characters caught up in complex relationships and questioning their identity within them. I appreciated the diversity of people, places and times Baldwin wrote from the perspective of to make up the collection. He was adept at finding resounding voices for each of these characters, from playful young Black boys to a violently racist white sheriff. I felt like I understood the meaning and themes of some of these stories more than others, but it was easy to feel drawn into them all. The final and title story of Going to Meet the Man was one of the most disturbing works of literature I've ever encountered, and the most difficult to keep reading. Racism was described throughout many of these works, but Going to Meet the Man details how it has been passed on through generations of white families through violence to sedate depraved insecurity. I would be wary of reading this particular story if descriptions of violent racism and lynchings are triggering to you. My primary issue reading this collection was the length of the paragraphs. Often times I got lost in a passage and had to re-read it repeatedly to make sense of it, thought I doubt this is a problem for everyone. Overall, I enjoyed being introduced to Baldwin's style and skill through these stories, and look forward to reading his longer novels.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Murder, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Racism, Torture, Addiction, Hate crime, and Police brutality
Minor: Sexual content and Toxic relationship
halceeeeeeeee's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Hate crime, Murder, Physical abuse, and Racism
gayliott's review
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Racism, Hate crime, Police brutality, Violence, and Torture
eddyn's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
If i had to choose one piece of writing that moved me the most inside it has to be this story. Like a ride through a town, an uneasy glance at a window, it is short and effective, yet somehow genius at pointing out the slow agony of the different characters: this book is like a series of slowed frames in a movie that stay printed at the back of my brain, full of questions unanswered.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Death, Hate crime, Murder, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Violence
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