THIS WEEK’S MUSE
JAMES BALDWIN, WRITER
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented…but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive.”
James Baldwin was an American writer and achieved international acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His writing is often semi-autobiographical – centering on race, politics, sexuality, and human rights and he was an active supporter of black and gay rights throughout his life.
He was born in 1924 as the eldest of nine children and grew up in poverty in the Black ghetto of Harlem in New York City. He grew up with a loving mother and a tough stepfather, with whom he clashed because James “Read books, liked movies, and had white friends,” all of which, in his stepfather’s eyes, “threatened James’s salvation.” Unlike his stepfather, he “never really managed to hate white people.”
Developing as a writer and disillusioned by American prejudice against Black people, he left the United States aged 24 to settle in Paris. He needed to see himself and his writing outside of an African-American context and escape the hopelessness that many young African-Americans succumbed to in New York.
In all of Baldwin’s works, but particularly in his novels, the main characters are often twisted up in a “cage of reality” that sees them fighting for their soul against the limitations of the human condition or against their place at the edges of a society consumed by prejudice. And only through love can his characters resolve their personal and historical struggle.
In 1957, after achieving considerable success as a writer, he returned to the United States and became an active participant in the civil rights struggle that was gripping the heart of the nation. He had been powerfully moved by the images in the press of 15 year old Dorothy Counts standing up to racist mobs at her school. Baldwin stood by Malcolm X’s assertion that if one is a citizen, one should not have to fight for one’s civil rights.
“Once I found myself on the other side of the ocean, I see where I came from very clearly…I am the grandson of a slave, and I am a writer. I must deal with both.”
Baldwin’s impact as a writer has been profound and lasting. Today he remains one of the major voices in civil and human rights in the United States. He was a complex man, created in part by a challenging society, through which he navigated with great energy and sensitivity. A piercing moral consciousness and a powerful belief that nothing can be changed until it is faced, marked his life and his work.
“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”
HAPPENING
Sunday, June 25, 3pm
WEAVING IN & OUT OF FOLK
With Naomi Westwater
Folk music that flirts with rock and jazz.
A delight not to be missed!
$25