This Morning, This Evening, So Soon is a story in the collection Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin.
Set primarily in Paris, the story is narrated in the first person by an unnamed famous jazz musician and movie star. He is an African American musician who married a Swedish woman in Paris, where their biracial son grows up speaking French as his first language. For the narrator’s son, who has lived in France his entire life, America is “only a glamorous word” (146), but for the narrator, who grew up in Alabama, the United States is the oppressive, marginalizing country from which he had to escape in order to find the freedom to be himself.
The story probes the question of black American identity within an international context.
The story also pays great attention to music, in particular jazz, gospel, and American folk. The title of the story, "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon," is also a title of an American folk song and figures into several folks songs as a refrain
Image - Courtesy of Library of Congress, Pettus, Peter, "Participants, Some Carrying American Flags, Marching in the Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965
Adapted from Baldwin heritage blog
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