James Baldwin
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
In the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons,...
“I was not born to be what someone said I was. I was not born to be defined by someone else, but by myself, and myself only.” When, in the fall of 1987, the poet Quincy Troupe traveled to the south of France to interview James Baldwin, Baldwin’s brother David told him to ask Baldwin about everything—Baldwin was critically ill and David...
Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality.
With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin’s now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.
Giovanni's Room, Baldwin's second novel, deals frankly with homosexuality in a manner daring for its time. It depicts a white American struggling to accept his homoerotic desires. David, the protagonist, like Baldwin himself, feels alienated from his native country and moves to Paris in search of a freer life. In the passage Baldwin reads on this recording, David recalls a childhood sexual encounter with another boy—an encounter that left
...Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties,...
13) Nothing personal
Personal and prophetic, these essays uncover what it means to live in a racist American society with insights that feel as fresh today as they did over the 4 decades in which he composed them. Longtime Baldwin fans and especially those just discovering his genius will appreciate...