i was stupidly lucky in my last year of college to have taken a seminar that covered four of baldwin's major essay collections: notes of a native son (1955), nobody knows my name (1961), the fire next time (1963), and no name in the street (1972), all available in the volume of his collected essays edited by toni morrison.
maybe this is overly sentimental, but i think baldwin taught me what it means to be an honest person and a good writer, the two great aspirations he adopts in his first book. he also taught me what it means to be a compassionate but unsparing social and political critic of american modernity.
reading baldwin was the first time i've ever felt truly at home in a text. few other works have affected me like his.
Jun 11, 2024
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Feb 23, 2025
james had his finger on the pulse. i was first introduced to him via Sunny's Blues. what does it mean to be an artist nowadays?
is it this feeling of the ice in your veins? ice that's starting to melt because you feel the passion of your work, of your dreams?
i really liked Giovanni's Room... i think we all had that lover that we kept quiet in a room somewhere. maybe if the world knew of this love it would become tainted in a way. the vulnerability of this short but sweet book. if you have to hide your love ~ is it love?
pour one out for james.
Feb 13, 2025
The way Baldwin writes really makes you feel it. I highly recommend if you like being messy or wonder what it would be like to be a bisexual man in 1950s paris.
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