While the world has inevitably evolved since the time of Baldwin and Petry's writing, this does not imply that the causes of the suffering experienced by people of color have been completely eradicated. Rather, they’ve persisted in various forms and degrees, which continue to emerge from the evolving world, all the while remaining firmly anchored in the long-standing traditions around racial discrimination and its implications. Therefore, while the environments of Ann Petry’s The Street, James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues, and Junot Diaz’s “Drown,” are all shaped by the similar issue of racial discrimination, each story's characters are distinct because, not only are their experiences subjective, but the time and space of each story contribute to…show more content… In this context, despite the fact that it demonstrates development within the community, searching for potential improvements in such environments can result in inaccurate assessments that construct a narrative which may not be entirely grounded in the reality that is being portrayed. In other words, while it is inaccurate to label certain elements of an environment as having “improved,” over time based on the measurement of experiences, there is value to investigating and comparing these experiences. A commonality between the experiences of the characters in the aforementioned works is that they take place in the same setting – America. Racial discrimination has long been ingrained in America, and it has created segregated communities that are essentially a culmination of various forms of racial…show more content… This division of perspectives is the primary source of tension in Sonny’s Blues. At the beginning of the story, the narrator is represented with an unwillingness to listen and, as a result, he is unable to fully understand the experience of those around him, particularly in the way in which they escape their suffering. While he is having a conversation about using heroin with one of Sonny’s friends, he says “All this was carrying me to some place I didn't want to go. I certainly didn't want to know how it felt. It filled everything, the people, the houses, the music, the dark, quicksilver barmaid, with menace; and this menace was their reality.” The narrator found contentment in following the middle-class values of qualities such as hard work and discipline and, despite living in the midst of various forms of suffering, they hinder his understanding of the environment and people around him. Even so, Baldwin's portrayal of the narrator has less to do with highlighting Harlem's adverse social and economic circumstances or all of the ways that people of color suffer within the
