Notes of a Native Son was originally published in 1955, when the author was thirty-one. An editor friend, Sol Stein, had convinced Baldwin to publish a collection of essays. In the Preface to the 1984 edition, Baldwin says that writing these essays was a process of both claiming his "birthright," or the universality of his experience as a human being, and locating himself within his own particular "inheritance" of traits, disadvantages, and privileges which made up the uniqueness of his individual experience.
The essays included in this lesson plan span literary criticism and philosophy to activism and colorful anecdote. In "Everybody's Protest Novel," Baldwin criticizes Harriet Beecher...
