| James Baldwin |
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1924-1987, African-American novelist and social critic.
Born in Harlem, Baldwin grew up poor and unhappy, especially after his
mother's marriage in 1927 to a domineering fundamentalist minister from New
Orleans who seemed to hate his stepson. As a boy, he read prodigiously. He
also became, in his teens, a junior minister whose oratory attracted a
growing congregation. He subsequently lost his faith, however, and left
Harlem to work in New Jersey. His experience of racism and segregation there
drove him to Greenwich Village where he found a somewhat more congenial
racial climate and more opportunities for writing.
In 1947, Baldwin began his literary career with book reviews in the Nation and New Leader and attracted attention with an article on black-Jewish relations and a short story in Commentary. Seeking greater personal freedom, he moved to Paris in 1948. In his essay "Everybody's Protest Novel," about Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Richard Wright's Native Son, he questioned the use of fiction to advocate social change. In 1953, Baldwin published his first novel, the largely autobiographical Go Tell It on the Mountain. Set in Harlem, the book recounted the difficulties of his adolescence and his struggles with his stepfather. Notes of a Native Son (1955), a collection of essays, commented skillfully on racism in America, and his novel Giovanni's Room (1956) was one of the boldest treatments of homosexuality in American literature to that time. In 1956, Baldwin returned home to observe the burgeoning civil rights movement. A long trip through the South resulted in a series of highly rhetorical essays, which, collected in Nobody Knows My Name (1961) and The Fire Next Time (1963), led to his recognition as a major American essayist and a leading critic of racism. Between these books came Another Country (1962), a sensational, best-selling novel about racism, love, and sexuality. The three books established Baldwin as an international celebrity, sought out by the press and traveling among homes in France, Turkey, and the United States. In 1964, his controversial drama Blues for Mister Charlie, about one of the most heinous crimes of the civil rights era, ran for 150 performances on Broadway. Some critics found it complex, but others thought it confused and propagandistic. Another play, The Amen Corner, first staged in 1955 and revived on Broadway in 1968, drew on his religious background and left unsettled the question of his competence as a dramatist. His later novels, none of which achieved the success of his earlier work, included another study of the sixties in America, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), the best-selling If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), and perhaps his most ambitious book, Just Above My Head (1979). The last, especially, testified to Baldwin's continuing fascination with homosexuality and with the place of music, especially gospel, in black culture; it also reflected the less confrontational attitude of his later years. His nonfictional writing was collected in The Price of the Ticket (1985). Especially in his earlier novels and essays, Baldwin brought to the often turbulent American discussion of race an almost unsurpassed understanding of its various psychological nuances and consequences. His complicated sense of himself as an artist, a black American, a homosexual, and a man of religion (even after he lost his faith) was well served by high intelligence, distinct literary ability, and a will toward love, peace, and reconciliation in spite of the rage and bitterness that racism inspired. His best work continues to afford keen insights into perhaps the most intractable of American social problems. source: http://www.historychannel.com/perl/print_book.pl?ID=34794 |