James Baldwin and the Challenge of Ethnic Literature in the Eighties

Abstract

In any discussion of the literature of ethnic groups or for that matter of the literature of emerging nations, a prominent consideration is the impact of cultural nationalism relating to the aspirations and hopes of such people. I have given a rather lofty title to this paper only to draw attention to what I regard as the lost intensity of the message of the '50s and '60s. James Baldwin, as writer-in-residence at Bowling Green University in the late '70s, was delivering the same message which made him famous, ever since Notes of a Native Son (1955) through Nobody Knows My Name (which was selected by the Notable Books Council of the American Library Association as one of the outstanding books for 1961) to The Fire Next Time (1963) and No Name in the Street (1972). The message is that black people must fight the oppressor for equality and respect but that in so doing they will also help whites to a better way of life. I would also like to frame this discussion on a much larger canvas by referring to the Conference of African Writers and Artists which was held in Paris in the summer of 1956. Baldwin had by then registered his impact on the literary consciousness of the United States and the world with his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953). Baldwin also at this time was quite fascinated by the enormous impact that Third World nations were going to have upon the future of any discussion pertaining to culture, nationalism, or literature. In his essay on Princes and Powers in the book Nobody Knows My Name, one sees that Baldwin senses the birth of something new, very exciting, and potentially explosive. He realizes that the gathering of eminent poets, scholars, and writers from nations freeing themselves from the colonial yoke meant something far more important than the actual event itself. For one thing it meant that a reordering and a restructuring of the entire value system would not only be discussed but be demanded. The basic philosophies upon which the Western world had built its intellectual domination were sure to be challenged. The conference provided Baldwin almost the perfect backdrop for examining the condition of the black man in the United States in relation to his own position there as the only black representative of the Western world. While he saw at the conference that Africans and Asians were going to