Sonny's Blues: The Harlem Renaissance

Sonny's Blues was written in 1957, 37 years after the roaring twenties had come to an end. Long after the great Migration, where millions of blacks moved to northern cities to escape Jim Crow, and embrace the new found possibilities offered. During this period African-Americans in New York, collectively gathered in Harlem mainly, it was usually alluded to as the black capital. There blacks shared culturally and also, influenced music greatly. This is also where the "new negro" persona was crafted, blacks were no longer going to be referred to as someone's mammies or boy. They started taking pride in being black and weren’t going to walk around ashamed anymore, all of this lead to the Harlem Renaissance. Harlem Renaissance is where colored photographers,

According to (jod.sagepub.com) black adolescents and young adults from Harlem sampled heroin by the age of 18. Harlem is an urban neighborhood, filled with public assistance apartments, poverty, and violence caused havoc on the neighborhood. Family struggles normally plagued those who lived in these communities, lack of money meant that most kids turned to the streets to find closure and assistance. Sonny’s Blues was written by James Baldwin who was also faced with the similar troubles, born to a single mother in Harlem, who later remarried. Growing up with other siblings favoritism was happening, according to pbs.org, he didn't get on well with his religious stepfather. The story also states, Sonny being the fathers favorite and was “the apple of his fathers’ eye". Baldwin’s work usually shows similar situations as to where one child is favored over the other since he's lived through

That you shouldn’t let your living situations or surroundings determine your outcome. Sonny's Blues shows challenges that troubled the African-American community, and how drugs troubled the young artists and kept them bound like slaves. How those living in Harlem, felt like there was no escape to the poverty that surrounded them. How a young artist was overcoming his demons, with the support of his family and living out his dream. How one has to forgive and not let the past control one’s future, nor let the surroundings of your environment determine where you will go in