Sonny’s Blues Perceived with Current Events

With corona virus changing the world I once knew, it has also reshaped my understanding of narratives we read in class. Sonny’s Blues is a prime example of a story that corona virus changed my perspective on. Specifically it has changed my perception of inner cities. I have always had a complicated relationship with neighborhoods, as when I was young I was aware I was fortunate. However it wasn’t until I saw the dilapidated neighborhoods of Chicago, NYC, Compton, my home city of Detroit, Watts, and north Champaign in person. After seeing the conditions people live through in the urban “trenches”, as they were called”, I came to realize the scale to which I was blessed. I was sure to not let my position go to my head and always check my privilege on a regular basis. I feel very sympathetic to Sonny’s brother as I fear for those who I left behind in middle school and hope they achieve great things succeed in life when I know life is cruel and unfair.

In Sonny’s Blues the narrator is a school teacher and he has anxiety about the future of his students and dreads that some will be incarcerated in the future. This especially resonated with me as I was taken from my affluent magnet school in Minnesota, 25 minutes south of the capital St. Paul, to attend Franklin Middle School. This rocked my world as I had only seen boys exiting a lost hock game fight. Never before had I seen 60 people play basketball on one court. I was never exposed to people hanging shoes and children, age 10-13 being arrested for trafficking heroin in middle school. This is what resonated with me as I knew drug dealers in my school, just as Sonny’s brother was aware that the drugs would take hold of the lives of many of his students. I’ve seen classmates arrested for both drug position and fighting where I knew they would go to the police station, where the pipeline to prison begins for many African American and Latino boys and girls. From here I began to think about how my view of my classmates that evolved themselves in drugs mirrored Sonny’s bother’s emotion toward his brother. Just like Sonny, these classmates of mine weren’t violent. In fact these children were some of the most down to earth funny, and extroverted people I have meet and their faces still come to mind when I am alerted of a local arrest.

My mind was further expanded when I saw the privileged position of the United States compared to the country my father immigrated from. Here, in Quito Ecuador, individuals “post up”, stand firm, in front of elementary schools selling rocks of substances held in aluminum, presumably crack, to other children. When I brought this up to my father he told me he had acquaintances that started selling drugs in high school. He was very envious of them because they drove sports cars, had the newest watches, and wore the hottest brands. This motivated my father to work, as it did me to find a way out of Franklin so that one day I could return to bring opportunities to these children who have no option but crime to feed their families.

Additionally these very neighborhoods are being the worsed hit by Corona. My favorite city in the U.S., Detroit, and my father’s home burrow of the Bronx have been ensnared in corona cases which is painful to see. I think back on Sonny’s Blues and how during the time 1918 H1N1, influenza, was still in the minds of parents. These areas do not encourage saving for a rainy day, instead land lords make rent absurd to the people who need the most assistance, promoting paycheck to paycheck living which Corona has thoroughly obliterated with the rise of unemployment. As unemployment closes in on 30% I think about the era Sonny’s Blues took place in. Where inequality, both racially and economic inequality, were seen in every facet of American culture civil right groups mobilized to fight the status quo. Just as I am interested in climate conscious policy and a welfare state that aids those standing on the bottom rung of society to begin their accent to middle class I keep Sonny’s Blues in mind to remind me in the words of Chance the rapper “everybody people, everybody bleed, everybody need some love, everybody know how it go”.