Everyone likes good storiesBy nature, human beings like stories. Sea captains talk about ferocious storms, travelers describe exotic places, friends remember the good times they spent together, and people listen. Thoughts are a different matter: fewer people will listen because there's simply less to get excited about, especially if the listener can't relate. James Baldwin, author of numerous novels and essays, including ?Notes of a Native Son? has a lot of thoughts to share and keeps the reader interested as he shares them. Baldwin takes the reader through ?Notes? telling stories from his life and sharing his thoughts on being a black man along the way. Baldwin's use of stories not only keeps the reader interested in the essay, but also lets them know where Baldwin is coming from, which makes his points much more understandable. is an essay that focuses on the death and funeral of Baldwin's father in 1943, but most of the points that Baldwin makes in the essay are about being a black man living in the United States during that time, when racial tensions were very strong. In? Notes,? Baldwin provides the reader with first-hand accounts of these tensions, including one time when he was almost killed. Baldwin had been living in New Jersey for a year, where he ?learned? that being black meant exactly that? Was he simply at the mercy of the reflexes that skin color caused in other people? (68). It was in New Jersey that Baldwin truly learned how whites mistreated blacks. On his last night there, he went to see a movie with a white friend and then tried to order food at a diner. When he was told, "We don't serve Negroes here?" (70) his repressed anger took over and he returned to the streets...... middle of paper ...... changed from hating it to wishing he was still here to help him with the problems of the treatment of black whites whose existence he was only now realizing. Although his father warned him of these problems, Baldwin had to experience them to believe him. Since the reader cannot experience many of the events that led to Baldwin's current beliefs, his first-hand accounts are best. These stories make Baldwin's points more believable in the reader's mind, just as his father's points became more believable in Baldwin's mind after experiencing firsthand what his father was warning him about. This credibility from experience is how Baldwin reaches us in the same way his father eventually reached him. Works Cited Baldwin, James. ?Notes of a Native Son.? 1955. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998. 63-84.