Nichole Portell

Dr. Pardee

LI220-74

24 April, 2004

James Baldwin and His Life

James Baldwin, born in Harlem New York City, August 2, 1924 was a very famous civil rights activist as well as a famous novelist. The oldest of nine children, James was of the age of only just 14, when he became a preacher at a small Fireside Pentecostal revivalist church in Harlem. James wanted to be a preacher like his stepfather. In the 1940s, he decided that he wanted to dedicate his life to literature instead of religion.

His first novel was called, "Go Tell It on the Mountain" which was published in 1953 when he was nearly 30. He wrote it in Switzerland, and it is considered an American classic. His first novel was an autobiographical work about growing up as an African American in Harlem. Though James spent much of his life and time in France, he was still an American writer. For a number of years, James was a freelance writer, working on only book reviews.

When a few of Baldwin's friends were assassinated, such as Medgar Evers, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, he returned to France where he worked on a book called, "If Beale Street Could Talk" (1974). Some people even said that they felt a sense of bitterness and harshness in this novel. Baldwin, in his writing, "Another Country," had it set in Greenwich Village, Harlem and France. It is a novel of mixed emotions: sexual, racial, political, and artistic, with a theme that explores black-white relations.

Some of the many works that James Baldwin wrote were "Go Tell It on the Mountain" (1953), "The Amen Corner" (play, 1965), "Notes of a Native Son" (1955), "Giovanni's Room" (1956), "Nobody Knows My Name" (1961). Some others that he wrote were, "Another Country" (1962), "The Fire Next Time" (1963), "Blues for Mister Charlie" (play, 1964), "Going to Meet the Man" (1965), "Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone" (1968), and "No Name in the Street" (1972).

James Baldwin was an openly gay man who was increasingly outspoken in condemning discrimination against lesbian and gay people. His novels, "Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone," and "Going to Meet the Man," gave powerful descriptions of American racism. Baldwin made his home in France mainly, but he often returned to the USA to lecture or to teach. In one of the articles The Fire Next Time, "In 1957, he began spending half of each year in New York City." Even though he lived in France, he always seemed to find himself in the United States and in the city of New York.

James Baldwin wrote novels all the way up until his death on December 1, 1987 in St. Paul, France. The last ten years of his life, Baldwin produced many works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and then he went to teach as a way of connecting with the youth. James Baldwin, by his death, had become one of the most important and vocal advocates for equality. James created pieces that will live on for generations to come and novels that, "will remain essential parts of American canons." James was also ranked with Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison as a spokesman for his generation of black writers.

Works Cited