James Baldwin in the documentary, I Am Not Your Negro. The Harlem-born writer’s works are still relevant in today’s political landscape.Bob Adelman
This Saturday marks the 101st birthday of James Baldwin, the author of Giovanni’s Room and Go Tell It on the Mountain. The Harlem-born writer, public speaker and civil rights advocate wrote six novels, two plays and multiple short stories over the course of his career. Over a century after he was born, he remains vital in a time where nativism, white supremacy, and MAGA supporters are on the rise.
Baldwin was an iconoclast who intertwined his work as a writer and as an activist, ruthlessly criticizing destructive racial segregation in the U.S., the country’s participation in deadly war abroad, and all forms of oppression. His rejection of the idea that artists need to separate themselves from the political world is still relevant, and while any of his novels are a great starting point, it’s Baldwin’s non-fiction that awakens you to the fearlessness of his prose. Here are four of his texts to seek out:
The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity (1962)
In the fall of 1962, Baldwin gave a talk at the New York Community Church that was broadcast through the listener-supported WBAI radio station. A portion of his speech was later published in the African-American political journal Freedomways, and included in the 2010 compendium The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings. This segment of Baldwin’s lecture provides insight into his sense of responsibility as an artist, and was a call to action to “ask very hard questions and take very rude positions” in face of the violently racist conditions of the American South. This act is a human responsibility, he writes, as the artist’s struggle for integrity is a metaphor for the universal struggle in becoming a human being.
The Fire Next Time (1963)
A non-fiction book comprised of two essays Baldwin wrote in 1962 – My Dungeon Shook, which was first published in The Progressive magazine, and Letter from a Region in My Mind, published in The New Yorker. This book shows Baldwin’s reach in writing about the Black experience in the U.S., targeting a white audience that didn’t understand the civil rights movement. Baldwin anticipates in the latter essay that the U.S. will come to a violent ending if white and Black citizens do not start trying – “like lovers” – to change through a “tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
‘Thank you, James Baldwin’: Documentarian Raoul Peck reflects on his remarkable Oscar-nominated film, I Am Not Your Negro
We Can Change the Country (1963)
This succinct, powerful and hopeful essay is a criticism of the U.S., vital not only because Baldwin calls on people to show those in power that a government and a nation aren’t synonymous, but also because he establishes that the American race “problem” was created by its own society. Also available in the 2010 compendium, Baldwin’s essay questions why his sheer presence as a Black man upsets people, writing, “… you must ask yourself why. I, for example, do not bring down property values when I move in. You bring them down when you move out,” alluding to the “white flight” from central cities to the suburbs.
On Language, Race, and the Black Writer (1979)
Also included in an op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times, Baldwin originally improvised this speech in 1979, at University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley News called the talk one of Baldwin’s many important post-civil rights movement critiques. However, he here rejects the term “civil rights movement” by quoting Malcolm X: “If you are a citizen, why do you have to fight for your civil rights?” Baldwin then argues that the movement was co-opted through the murder of so many of its leaders, and foretells a more violent rebellion.