James Baldwin

by

D. Quentin Miller

• LAST REVIEWED: 26 October 2023
• LAST MODIFIED: 26 October 2023
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199827251-0004

Introduction

James Baldwin (b. 1924–d. 1987) is widely considered the most important African American author of his time, particularly during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Born and raised in Harlem, Baldwin rose from poverty and left New York and the United States to become what he called “a transatlantic commuter” from the late 1940s until his death in 1987. Baldwin originally went to Paris, but, later, he spent many years in Istanbul and in the south of France, returning to America intermittently. Baldwin’s literary output, like his life, is marked by restlessness in that he constantly experimented with new forms, new subjects, and new perspectives. Critics frequently debate whether Baldwin was more adept at fiction, based on his six novels and one story collection, or nonfiction, based on the same number of collections of essays and book-length essays. He also wrote three plays (one unpublished), a film script, a children’s book, two collections of poems, and a handful of works that defy easy classification. He resisted all labels and would be reluctant to classify himself as any single type of writer, just as he would resist words like “gay” to describe his sexual orientation, even though homosexuality and bisexuality are frequent motifs in his fiction, and even though he made no secret of his same-sex love affairs. Baldwin’s reputation as a writer was augmented by his prominence as a speaker. Having been trained as a preacher from a young age in a Pentecostal church, Baldwin was a comfortable and formidable orator. During the years of intensified strife in the American South in the early 1960s, Baldwin visited that region not only to write about what he had witnessed, but also to speak publicly, sometimes in front of huge audiences, about what had to be done to end America’s racial turmoil. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1963 and was summoned to a meeting with then-attorney general Robert Kennedy that same year to discuss race relations in the United States. The year 1963 also marked the publication of arguably his most famous book, The Fire Next Time, which was largely composed of a lengthy essay entitled “Down at the Cross,” first published in The New Yorker the previous year, about the Nation of Islam, Black Christianity, and the future of race relations. Although Baldwin’s works published after 1963 did not garner the same universal praise that his early works received, he continued to publish prolifically and tirelessly until his death of esophageal cancer in France in 1987. Critics have begun to recover and appreciate some of Baldwin’s lesser-known works in recent years. Along with a sustained and ever-increasing body of published criticism, five recent conferences have been devoted entirely to Baldwin’s life and work (London in 2007, Boston in 2009, New York in 2011, Montpellier in 2014, and Paris in 2016) as well as a conference dedicated to him along with his artistic mentor Beauford Delaney (Knoxville, Tennessee, 2020). An annual journal, James Baldwin Review (cited under Special Journal Issues), was inaugurated in 2015 and is an essential platform for publishing Baldwin scholarship. I Am Not Your Negro, a 2016 Oscar-nominated documentary film based on an unpublished Baldwin manuscript, followed by an acclaimed 2019 film adaptation of his novel If Beale Street Could Talk, revived popular interest in him. In 2017 the Schomburg Center announced a major new acquisition of the author’s papers, which will become available for research in stages. This significant scholarly energy demonstrates a robust critical interest in Baldwin’s work that shows no signs of abating.

General Overviews

Biographies provide readers and scholars with important connections between Baldwin’s life and work, but for readers who are primarily interested in understanding Baldwin’s work apart from his life, the following sources are useful entry points. Dudley 2019 and Miller 2003 have the advantage of illuminating the full sweep of Baldwin’s career. Macebuh 1973, Sylvander 1980, and Porter 1989 reveal how Baldwin’s critical reputation shifted over time. Chametsky 1989 and Troupe 1989 are valuable for demonstrating the way contemporary writers responded to Baldwin immediately after his premature death, and Standley and Pratt 1989 is a valuable (though not comprehensive) collection of primary interviews.

• Chametsky, Jules, ed. Black Writers Redefine the Struggle: A Tribute to James Baldwin. Amherst, MA: Institute for Advanced Studies, 1989.

  The proceedings from a conference immediately following Baldwin’s death. Contains tributes by Professor Michael Thelwell and novelists Chinua Achebe and John Edgar Wideman, among others. Gives a good sense of Baldwin’s place in Black literary history at the time of his death.

• Dudley, Marc. Understanding James Baldwin. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2019.

  DOI: 10.1353/book64116

  The first chapter, in particular, provides a useful overview of the key themes of Baldwin’s life and work. Testifies to the author’s rising importance in the twenty-first century. Though published well after Baldwin’s critical renaissance was underway, the study undervalues the way recent critics have reevaluated and appreciated Baldwin’s later work.

• Macebuh, Stanley. James Baldwin: A Critical Study. New York: Third Press, 1973.

  One of the earliest studies of Baldwin’s career, long out of print and not necessarily easy to find, this study marks a key moment in African American literary criticism and provides a foundational study for race-based criticism of Baldwin’s career through the early 1970s. Notes the complexity of Baldwin’s work while preferring certain works (generally the earlier ones) to others.

• Miller, D. Quentin. “James Baldwin.” In American Writers (Retrospective Supplement II). Edited by Jay Parini, 1–17. New York: Scribner’s Reference, 2003.

  Concise overview of Baldwin’s career, organized chronologically.

• Porter, Horace A. Stealing the Fire: The Art and Protest of James Baldwin. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989.

  Although published after Baldwin’s death, Porter’s study stops abruptly at the publication of The Fire Next Time in 1963. As with many early studies of Baldwin, this one selects the period that many early critics associated with Baldwin’s golden age. Assumes that Baldwin’s legacy will rest on his essays, especially his early essays. This study is valuable for clarifying the importance of Baldwin’s early essays but reveals critical blind spots with regard to the themes Baldwin tends to explore in his fictional works.

• Standley, Fred L., and Louis H. Pratt, eds. Conversations with James Baldwin. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989.

  Although not exhaustive, this is the most comprehensive collection of interviews with Baldwin in print. It is arranged chronologically and is indispensable in terms of gaining Baldwin’s perspective on his work, his life, and the world he lived in.

• Sylvander, Carolyn. James Baldwin. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980.

  The second monograph on Baldwin, more objective than Macebuh 1973. Although published during Baldwin’s lifetime, this book can be a useful introduction to the scope of Baldwin’s work. Largely an overview summary, Sylvander’s work is accessible and clear. Attends much more to Baldwin’s fiction than to his nonfiction.

• Troupe, Quincy, ed. James Baldwin: The Legacy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.

  Troupe’s book is dominated by appreciations of Baldwin by other writers such as Toni Morrison, William Styron, Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, and many others. It also contains a smattering of interviews, several pieces of Baldwin’s nonfiction, a reprinted academic essay by Eleanor Traylor, and a bibliography.