Synopses & Reviews
The works of James Baldwin constitute one of the major contributions to American literature in the twentieth century, and nowhere is this more evident than in
The Price of the Ticket, a compendium of nearly fifty years of Baldwin's powerful nonfiction writing. With truth and insight, these personal, prophetic works speak to the heart of the experience of race and identity in the United States. Here are the full texts of
Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, and
The Devil Finds Work, along with dozens of other pieces, ranging from a 1948 review of
Raintree Country to a magnificent introduction to this book that, as so many of Mr. Baldwin's works do, combines his intensely private experience with the deepest examination of social interaction between the races. In a way,
The Price of the Ticket is an intellectual history of the twentieth-century American experience; in another, it is autobiography of the highest order.
About the Author
James Baldwin's celebrated works of fiction include
Go Tell It on the Mountain,
Giovanni's Room,
Another Century,
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone,
If Beale Street Could Talk,
Just Above My Head, and the short story collection
Going to Meet the Man. He was also the author of a book of poetry,
Jimmy's Blues, two dramatic works,
Blues for Mister Charlie and
The Amen Corner, and many works of nonfiction, including
Nobody Knows My Name,
The Fire Next Time, and
Notes of a Native Son. Born in Harlem in 1924, he lived for many years in France, where he died in 1987.
Table of Contents
"Introduction: The Price of the Ticket"
"The Harlem Ghetto"
"Lockridge: 'The American Myth'"
"Journey to Atlanta"
"Everybody's Protest Novel"
"Encounter on the Seine: Black Meets Brown"
"Princes and Powers"
"Many Thousand Gone"
"Stranger in the Village"
"A Question of Identity"
"The Male Prison"
"Carmen Jones: The Dark Is Light Enough"
"Equal in Paris"
"Notes of a Native Son"
"Faulkner and Desegregation"
"The Crusade of Indignation"
"A Fly in Buttermilk"
"The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American"
"On Catfish Row"
"Nobody Knows My Name"
"The Northern Protestant"
"Fifth Avenue, Uptown"
"They Can't Turn Back"
"In Search of a Majority"
"Notes for a Hypothetical Novel"
"The Dangerous Road Before Martin Luther King"
"East River, Downtown"
"Alas, Poor Richard"
"The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy"
"The New Lost Generation"
"Color"
"A Talk to the Teachers"
"The Fire Next Time"
"Nothing Personal"
"Words of a Native Son"
"The American Dream and the American Negro"
"White Man's Guilt"
"A Report from Occupied Territory"
"Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White"
"White Racism of World Community?"
"Sweet Lorraine"
"No Name in the Street"
"Review of Roots"
"The Devil Finds Work"
"An Open Letter to Mr. Carter"
"Every Good-Bye Ain't Gone"
"If Black English Ain't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?"
"An Open Letter to the Born Again"
"Dark Days"
"Notes on the House of Bondage"
"Here Be Dragons"