2019
James Baldwin
Essayist · Writer · Activist
Born into poverty in Harlem in 1924, James Baldwin was one of nine children between his mother and stepfather. By Baldwin’s account, his stepfather treated him more harshly than his other children due to his comparatively high intelligence. The young Baldwin found himself spending considerable time alone, primarily in libraries. It was in those libraries that Baldwin discovered a passion for writing. He wrote:
“I knew I was black, of course, but I also knew I was smart. I didn't know how I would use my mind, or even if I could, but that was the only thing I had to use.”
In middle school he was inspired by the writings of the Harlem Renaissance.
“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious, is to be in a rage almost all the time. So that the first problem is how to control that rage so that it won't destroy you.”
An eloquent voice on the subjects of race, religion, sexuality, and equality, Baldwin’s voice has withstood the test of time. At the tender age of 14, Baldwin followed in the footsteps of his stepfather and became a Pentecostal preacher at the Fireside Church in Harlem. It was this experience that inspired the signature cadence found in Baldwin’s writings. It did not take long for the influence of religion to fade in his life; by the time he was 17 he had determined that Christianity was based on false premises. When asked later in life by Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam about his religiosity, Baldwin replied, “I left the church 20 years ago and haven’t joined anything since.” He also related to Muhammad that “being in the pulpit was like working in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion worked.
“If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.”
During the American Civil Rights era, the church fell out of Baldwin’s favor and he turned his attention to literature. He is perhaps most well-known for his groundbreaking 1953 novel, the semiautobiographical Go Tell It on the Mountain. The novel served to shine a light on the African American experience within the context of established religion.
His second novel, Giovanni’s Room, is a light on his experiences as an American expat in Paris navigating his public appearance as a Black man and his private love affair with a male Italian bartender while at the same time engaged to a woman. A true classic of gay literature, Baldwin’s literary treatment of the multiple lenses in which the world sees him (and through which he sees the world) was the first of its kind.
Baldwin’s first nonfiction publication, Notes of a Native Son, pieces together a series of essays written during the author’s twenties that highlight the unfair and at times brutal mistreatment of African Americans in Harlem, as well as the hypocrisy of “separate but equal.” His scorching essays point a rightly accusing finger at segregation and its devastating effect on not only the most gifted, but the whole of the African American community.
“Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.”