JAMES BALDWIN,
American author, born (d. 1987); One of the most important social
commentators in the United States, most of Baldwin's work deals with
racial and sexual issues in the mid-20th century in the U.S.. This year
marks the centenary of his birth.
His novels are
notable for the personal way in which they explore questions of identity
as well as the way in which they mine complex social and psychological
pressures related to being black and gay well before the social,
cultural or political equality of these groups was improved.
One source of
support came from an admired older writer Richard Wright, whom he called
"the greatest black writer in the world." Wright and Baldwin became
friends for a short time and Wright helped him to secure the Eugene F.
Saxon Memorial Award. Baldwin titled a collection of essays Notes Of A Native Son, in clear reference to Wright's novel Native Son.
However,
Baldwin's 1949 essay "Everybody's Protest Novel" ended the two authors'
friendship because Baldwin asserted that Wright's novel Native Son, like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin
lacked credible characters and psychological complexity. However,
during an interview with Julius Lester. Baldwin explained that his
adoration for Wright remained: "I knew Richard and I loved him. I was
not attacking him; I was trying to clarify something for myself."
This was also the
year he met and fell in love with Lucien Happersberger. The boy was a
seventeen-year-old runaway, and the two became very close, until
Happersberger's marriage three years later, an event that left Baldwin
devastated.
James Baldwin
is one of the most celebrated American writers of the 20th century. He
wrote novels, essays, short stories, poetry, and even a screenplay. He's
best known for his affecting prose, his depth of thought, and his clear
moral vision for the country.
He was also a bit
of a character. In interviews he's often smoking a cigarette with his
legs crossed, casually calling the interviewer "baby" with a big toothy
grin.
Baldwin is
perhaps best known for his philosophies on race. And as an openly gay
man, Baldwin also spoke about sexuality in a time when it was unheard of
for many Black men to do so.
Now, some 40 years after his death, much of what he had to say about America continues to resonate.
Baldwin's
writings of the 1970s and 1980s were largely overlooked by critics,
although they have received increasing attention in recent years. Several of his essays and interviews of the 1980s discuss homosexuality and homophobia with fervor and forthrightness. Eldridge Cleaver's harsh criticism of Baldwin in Soul on Ice and elsewhere and Baldwin's return to southern France contributed to the perception by critics that he was not in touch with his readership. As
he had been the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, he
became an inspirational figure for the emerging gay rights movement. His two novels written in the 1970s, If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) and Just Above My Head (1979), stressed the importance of Black American families. He concluded his career by publishing a volume of poetry, Jimmy's Blues (1983), as well as another book-length essay, The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985), an extended reflection on race inspired by the Atlanta murders of 1979–1981.
At the time of Baldwin's death, he was working on an unfinished manuscript called Remember This House, a memoir of his personal recollections of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Following
his death, publishing company McGraw-Hill took the unprecedented step
of suing his estate to recover the $200,000 advance they had paid him
for the book, although the lawsuit was dropped by 1990. The manuscript forms the basis for Raoul Peck's 2016 documentary film I Am Not Your Negro.
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