James Baldwin

Abstract

James Baldwin (b. 1924–d. 1987) is widely considered the most important African American author of his time, particularly during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Born and raised in Harlem, Baldwin rose from poverty and left New York and the United States to become what he called “a transatlantic commuter” from the late 1940s until his death in 1987. Baldwin originally went to Paris, but, later, he spent many years in Istanbul and in the south of France, returning to America intermittently. Baldwin’s literary output, like his life, is marked by restlessness in that he constantly experimented with new forms, new subjects, and new perspectives. Critics frequently debate whether Baldwin was more adept at fiction, based on his six novels and one story collection, or nonfiction, based on the same number of collections of essays and book-length essays. He also wrote three plays (one unpublished), a film script, a children’s book, two collections of poems, and a handful of works that defy easy classification. He resisted all labels and would be reluctant to classify himself as any single type of writer, just as he would resist words like “gay” to describe his sexual orientation, even though homosexuality and bisexuality are frequent motifs in his fiction, and even though he made no secret of his same-sex love affairs. Baldwin’s reputation as a writer was augmented by his prominence as a speaker. Having been trained as a preacher from a young age in a Pentecostal church, Baldwin was a comfortable and formidable orator. During the years of intensified strife in the American South in the early 1960s, Baldwin visited that region not only to write about what he had witnessed, but also to speak publicly, sometimes in front of huge audiences, about what had to be done to end America’s racial turmoil. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1963 and was summoned to a meeting with then-attorney general Robert Kennedy that same year to discuss race relations in the United States. The year 1963 also marked the publication of arguably his most famous book, The Fire Next Time, which was largely composed of a lengthy essay entitled “Down at the Cross,” first published in The New Yorker the previous year, about the Nation of Islam, Black Christianity, and the future of race relations. Although Baldwin’s works published after 1963 did not garner the same universal praise that his early works received, he continued to publish prolifically and tirelessly until his death of esophageal cancer in France in 1987. Critics have begun to recover and appreciate some of Baldwin’s lesser-known works in recent years. Along with a sustained and ever-increasing body of published criticism, five recent conferences have been devoted entirely to Baldwin’s life and work (London in 2007, Boston in 2009, New York in 2011, Montpellier in 2014, and Paris in 2016) as well as a conference dedicated to him along with his artistic mentor Beauford Delaney (Knoxville, Tennessee, 2020). An annual journal, James Baldwin Review (cited under Special Journal Issues), was inaugurated in 2015 and is an essential platform for publishing Baldwin scholarship. I Am Not Your Negro, a 2016 Oscar-nominated documentary film based on an unpublished Baldwin manuscript, followed by an acclaimed 2019 film adaptation of his novel If Beale Street Could Talk, revived popular interest in him. In 2017 the Schomburg Center announced a major new acquisition of the author’s papers, which will become available for research in stages. This significant scholarly energy demonstrates a robust critical interest in Baldwin’s work that shows no signs of abating.