To his achievements as novelist, essayist, and playwright, Baldwin adds this collection of 19 lyrics that merge intense feeling against racism and oppression with a streetwise yet visionary poetic voice. In the powerful and earthy cadences of the blues traditionthe black's tragic voicehe confronts the destructive uses of power and asks us to reassess what constitutes a just society. In place of bitterness he offers compassion, and he looks beyond the rhetoric of protest, of personal and national failure, to the palace of wisdom. His upbeat conclusion is Our children are/ the morning star.