WHO was James Baldwin?
“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I instist on the right to criticize her.” -James Baldwin
Although James Baldwin spent much of his life abroad, he always remained true to type American writers. Regardless of whether he was working in Instanbul or Paris, Baldwin didn’t cease to reflect on his painful experiences as a black person living in white America. In his several novels, essays, and public speeches, his eloquent voice spoke of the struggle and pain of black Americans.
Born in Harlem in the year 1924, James Baldwin was the grandson of a slave. He was the eldest of his nine siblings. Baldwin grew up in absolute, developing some troubled relationships with his religious and strict stepfather. Growing up, Baldwin cast about a way on how to escape the circumstances facing him.
“I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.” -James Baldwin
Baldwin recalls that he was black, but also smart. By the time he was 14 years old, he was spending a lot of his time reading books in libraries and found his passion in writing plays, novels, and books.
-he was spending a lot of his time reading books in libraries and found his passion in writing plays, novels, and books.
During Baldwin early part of life, he followed the footsteps of is stepfather and later became a preacher.
Eager to move on, Baldwin left the pulpit and turned into a writer. He left home at the tender age of eighteen and took a job at the New Jersey railroad. After working for the New Jersey Railroad for a short, Baldwin decided to move to Greenwich Village, working specifically on book reviews for several years as a freelance writer.
Working as a freelance writer on book reviews, Baldwin managed to catch the attention of a renowned novelist Richard Wright.
While Baldwin hadn’t finished a novel yet, Wright helped him in securing a grant that supported him as a writer. At the age of 24, James Baldwin left for Paris, with the hope of finding some enough distance from the American society where he grew up to write about.
While in Paris, Baldwin wrote several pieces for a number of magazines, chief among them being Go Tell it on the Mountain that was published in 1953. Over the next ten years, Baldwin moved from Paris to Istanbul to New York and wrote two books, Notes of a Native Son (1955), and Nobody Knows My Name (1961).
He also wrote other novels, Giovanni’s Room (1956) and Another Country (1962) among others.
These essays did explore unprecedented honesty and racial tension, highlighting taboo themes such as interracial relationships and homosexuality.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” -James Baldwin
Overwhelmed by some sense of responsibility, Baldwin returned to the U.S to take part in civil rights movements. He did so while continuing to write particularly on matters to do with black identity and racial struggle. In 1987, Baldwin succumbed to stomach cancer at the age of 63. Being an advocate of equality, Baldwin is remembered as one of the creators of works of literary beauty that remain all-important components of the American canon. -
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