In Sonny's Blues, what is the setting and time?

Harlem in the middle of the twentieth century is the setting for “Sonny’s Blues.” Harlem is almost a character in the story, affecting the personalities and actions of the other characters. James Baldwin paints a bleak picture of Harlem, with housing projects jutting out of the streets “like rocks in the middle of a boiling sea” (p. 7). He speaks of angry boys, whose “heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities” (p. 1). The most poignant description of Harlem is that of the playground in the narrator’s housing project: “The playground is most popular with the children who don’t play at jacks, or skip rope, or roller skate, or swing, and they can be found in it after dark” (p. 7). Sonny wants to escape Harlem in order to escape drug use. And yet, the narrator actually chooses to remain in Harlem as an adult, teaching algebra to the next generation of boys with limited possibilities. He represents hope for the future of Harlem.