James Baldwin

Childhood

James Baldwin was born in New York City, freepik.

James Arthur Baldwin was born in Harlem, New York City, on August 2, 1924. His mother's name was Emma Berdis Jones. Baldwin would never know his biological father, and his mother raised him alone until he was three years old. In 1927, she married James' stepfather, David Baldwin, a Baptist preacher from New Orleans.

Young James Baldwin began attending Public School 24 in Harlem at five years old, where his teachers quickly noted his intelligence. Throughout his school years, Baldwin remained well-supported by teachers and mentors that noticed his potential and did their best to nurture it. In 1941, he graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.

Young Adulthood

To help support his family, Baldwin began to work immediately following his graduation. His mother and stepfather had an additional eight children, and the health of David Baldwin, who was considerably older than his wife, was beginning to decline. James Baldwin held various jobs, including constructing a United States Army depot, laying military train tracks in New Jersey, and later working at a restaurant in Greenwich Village.

Baldwin had begun to notice his attraction to men during high school and was able to further explore his sexuality in the more liberal environment of Greenwich Village. He bussed tables at Calypso Restaurant, a famously de-segregated Caribbean restaurant and community gathering place frequented by various artists, musicians, and intellectuals.

In 1945, Baldwin met Richard Wright, one of the most influential African American writers of the time. Baldwin gave Wright the manuscript of what would become his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, and Wright was sufficiently impressed to recommend the aspiring Baldwin for a fellowship.

In 1948, James Baldwin was twenty-four years old and disillusioned with American racism. With forty dollars in his pocket, Baldwin left the United States for Paris, where he would live for the next nine years.

Paris and Literary Career

In Paris, James Baldwin lived with friends or stayed in hotels; he was poor for the duration of his stay, but he appeared to be content. He wrote numerous essays, including "The Negro in Paris" and "Equal in Paris," reflecting on his experience in France as a Black man and how it differed from his experience in the United States.

Post-war France was a central hub for writers, artists, and intellectuals, and Baldwin was quickly absorbed into Paris' Left Bank culture. He became acquainted with figures such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Truman Capote, and his work was published in various magazines and anthologies. Most importantly, Baldwin could escape the racism he experienced in the United States. He was able to view from afar the racial conflicts at the heart of American society, a perspective that would influence his later writings and involvement in the civil rights movement.

Baldwin's published essays from his years in Paris also included two significant critiques of fellow American author Richard Wright, "Everybody's Protest Novel" (1949) and "Many Thousands Gone" (1951).

Baldwin also wrote and published some of his best-known works in Paris. His first novel, the semi-autobiographical Go Tell It on the Mountain that had been in progress for close to ten years, was published in 1953. The controversial Giovanni's Room (1956) and the essay collection Notes of A Native Son (1955) were also published during Baldwin's time in Paris.

Return to the United States and Involvement in the Civil Rights Movement

In 1957, James Baldwin returned to the United States. The Partisan Review had invited him to cover the desegregation of schools in the Southern states, taking the writer to states like North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.

James Baldwin came to be known as one of the most important voices of the civil rights movement. His essays eloquently unpacked issues of race, class, and identity in the United States, and his books Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961) and The Fire Next Time (1963) both sold more than a million copies.

He also became involved with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and traveled the country, giving lectures at universities on the topic of racial inequality.

In 1963, at the height of the civil rights movement, Baldwin was featured on the cover of Time Magazine.

James Baldwin: End of Life and Death

Baldwin's home in St. Paul-de-Vance, France, pixabay.

After 1969, James Baldwin split his time between France and the United States.

In 1987 Baldwin was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. Treatments were largely unsuccessful, and the cancer spread rapidly. Baldwin died in his home in southern France on December 1, 1987. He was 63 years old.

James Baldwin: Books

The following are some of James Baldwin's published books, including novels, essays, and short stories.

Novels

• Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) is James Baldwin's first novel, published in 1953. It is a semi-autobiographical novel that tells the story of John Grimes, a teenage boy growing up in Harlem, New York City, during the 1930s. John's father is a preacher. He is portrayed as a violent and difficult man, similar to Baldwin's stepfather. The story is set over the course of one 24 hour period, although flashbacks and changes in point of view sometimes take the reader into the past. The novel deals with themes of religion, racism, and coming-of-age and is often cited as one of the best American novels of the 20th century.

• Giovanni's Room (1956) is James Baldwin's second novel. It is a story about an American man living in Paris who falls in love with Giovanni, an Italian bartender, while his girlfriend is away from the city. The novel was controversial at the time of its publication due to its frank portrayal of a homosexual relationship (this was 1956, well before the gay rights movement). It remains a canonical example of queer American literature.

• Baldwin's other novels include Another Country (1962), Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), and Just Above My Head (1979).

Essay and Short Story Collections

• The collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son (1955), is one of James Baldwin's most valued works. The title is a reference to both Richard Wright's Native Son (1940) and Henry James' Notes of a Son and Brother (1914). The book is divided into three sections and includes several previously published essays; some are personal essays, such as detailing the relationship between Baldwin and his stepfather, and some are critical, such as Baldwin's critiques of Richard Wright's works. All of the essays, however, offer sharp social commentary and cultural analysis. Baldwin delves into the experience of both Black and white Americans to examine the complex, multifaceted nature of race in the United States.

• Baldwin's other essay collections include Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961), The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Street (1972), The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985), and The Price of the Ticket (1985).

• James Baldwin also has a short story collection titled Going to Meet the Man (1965).

James Baldwin: Poetry and Playwriting

Although he is best known for his novels and essays, James Baldwin also wrote poetry and a handful of plays. His only full-length collection of poetry is titled Jimmy's Blues and was published in 1985, just two years before his death. Baldwin's plays include The Amen Corner (1954) and Blues for Mister Charlie (1964).

James Baldwin: Quotes

When Baldwin's second novel, Giovanni's Room, was published in 1956, it was controversial for dealing with homosexual themes when practically no other mainstream writers were doing so. In this quote, an older gay man, Jacques, criticizes the American protagonist, David, for the way he plays with the feelings of his fiancee, Hella, and his Italian lover, Giovanni.

This quote comes from the title essay of Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son, his first book of essays, and one of his most important contributions to English literature. In the piece, the author describes his tumultuous relationship with his father. Here, Baldwin expresses the hatred he still felt for his father as he was dying and the realization that the hatred was obscuring his pain.

This quote comes from the second of two essays in The Fire Next Time, called "Down on the Cross: Letter from a Region in my Mind." The essay reflects on the role of religion in Baldwin's own life and the larger African American community; Baldwin argues that Christianity ultimately does a disservice to the African American community because it assumes a white God to whom Black people remain subordinate. In this quote, Baldwin expresses the argument that the color of someone's skin is only important because it is assigned political importance. Nothing human or personal equates value with skin color, only this arbitrary political assignment intended to maintain a certain distribution of power.

This quote comes from the essay "Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem" from the collection Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son. In this essay, Baldwin describes his childhood neighborhood, Harlem, and the lives of those who live there. He describes poverty and the means by which the poor are trapped within it. This quote refers to this idea as Baldwin speaks of the higher prices and lower quality of goods available for sale in Harlem.