Going to Meet the Man.

"In 1965, at the height of his fame, Baldwin published his only volume of short stories to date," a collection that has made "substantive contributions to the African American literary canon" (Nelson, African American Autobiographies, 29). This volume of eight short fictions, together in print for the first time, contains Sonny's Blues, one of Baldwin's most popular stories, and The Previous Condition, "the first Baldwin story to be featured in a major publication, in Commentary in October 1948" (Early Novels and Stories, LOA, 965). By turns haunting, heartbreaking, and horrifying--and informed throughout by Baldwin's uncanny knowledge of the wounds racism has left in both its victims and its perpetrators--Going to Meet the Man is a major work by one of our most important writers.