Looking for Jimmy Baldwin: Sex, Privacy, and Black Nationalist Fervor

Abstract

In an interview conducted shortly after the release of his film, For Langston (1989), Isaac Julien remarked that his project could easily have been titled Looking For Jimmy.' Instead, Julien's film, which explores the relationship between the black gay artist and the community, is dedicated to Baldwin, whose photograph weaves in and out of Julien's meditation on Langston Hughes. Julien's use of Baldwin's image renders visible gay black artistic lineage that has historically been obscured.2 By juxtaposing the Harlem-born Baldwin with his literary forefathers of the Renaissance, Julien suggests the ways in which Baldwin-as gay black artist-is direct descendant of homosexual and bisexual writers such as Bruce Nugent, Wallace Thurman, and Claude McKay.3 Unlike Hughes's sexuality, which Julien acknowledges has always been clouded in uncertainty, Baldwin has arguably been the most visible gay African-American writer since the Harlem Renaissance. Implicit in Julien's iconographic invocation of Baldwin is that we do not need to look for Jimmy since his sexuality-in contrast to that of Hughes-has never been in question.4 Often cited as an inspiration to many black gay writers, Baldwin's work, according to Joseph Beam, helped rip the hinges off the closet.5 Until the publication of Just Above My Head (1979), Baldwin's last novel, Beam claims that African-American writers had been suffering a kind of 'nationalistic heterosexism.'6 Whilst his writing offered solace and recognition for many of his contemporary readers, it was not until the 1980s that criticism (notably the work of Andrea Lowenstein and Emmanuel Nelson) began to argue for Baldwin's central place, not only as an important African-American writer, but as black and gay artist. Even cursory glance at recent scholarship on Baldwin indicates the ways in which the field is dominated by articles on Baldwin's explorations and depictions of black masculinity and sexuality. To cite one of many recent examples, Yasmin DeGout, in recent collection of Baldwin essays, makes the point that any reading of Baldwin's fiction reveals him to be progenitor of many of the theoretical formulations currently associated with feminist, gay, and gender studies .. .7 But even as Baldwin's reputation as an important-perhaps the most importantgay black American writer of the twentieth century becomes increasingly secure, closer examination of his work reveals myriad ambiguities, contradictions and uncertainties that sit uneasily with his increasingly iconic status. Although Baldwinand in particular his fiction-is noted for his bold portrayal of homosexual relation