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| Introduction to English Literature(2020-1) |
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Baldwin, James, 1924-1987
from Literature Online biography
Published in Cambridge, 2006, by Chadwyck-Healey (a ProQuest Information and Learning Company)
Copyright © 2006 ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All Rights Reserved.
James Baldwin (1924-1987), African American novelist, essayist, playwright and poet, is widely regarded as one of the most insightful, honest American authors of the second half of the twentieth century. An astute observer of political life in the United States, Baldwin dedicated his career to exposing the racial injustice at the heart of American society in a prose style that is consistently direct, eloquent and forceful. In such works as Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Notes of a Native Son (1955) and The Fire Next Time (1963), Baldwin drew from events in his own life in order to achieve an understanding of the critical social issues of his era. Baldwin's insights into race and sexuality derived from personal experience, and even his fictional writings are deeply autobiographical. Indeed, a passionate concern for truth runs throughout Baldwin's body of work. By analysing their own lives with absolute honesty, Baldwin argued in the preface to his play The Amen Corner (first produced in 1955; published in 1968), all Americans have the potential to understand and accept the fact that African Americans are vital members of American society. Furthermore, only after recognising this reality, Baldwin asserted, can America finally hope to 'become a nation and possibly a great one'. A tireless advocate of social equality, Baldwin played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, travelling throughout the South during the tense days of desegregation and devoting much of his writing of the period to examining possible solutions to the problem of social injustice in the United States. By the end of his life Baldwin had gained recognition as one of America's most important literary voices, and his works have influenced a number of writers, among them Toni Morrison , Amiri Baraka and Melvin Dixon .
James Baldwin was born James Arthur Jones on 2 August 1924 in Harlem. His mother, Emma Berdis Jones, was a housekeeper; Baldwin never knew his biological father. When he was three years old his mother married David Baldwin, a factory worker, who adopted his wife's young son. David Baldwin was a deeply religious man and a strict, often cruel disciplinarian, the cause of constant family strife throughout the younger Baldwin's childhood. Baldwin found escape in reading and writing, and at the age of 12, he published his first story in a church newsletter. At around this time, while attending Frederick Douglass Junior High School, Baldwin met the Harlem Renaissance poet, Countee Cullen, who mentored the aspiring writer, offering him advice on his short stories and helping him gain acceptance to the elite DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. Baldwin wrote a number of stories, plays and poems in high school and was an editor of the school's literary magazine. During these years Baldwin also served as a preacher at a Pentecostal church, an experience that would later form the basis of his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain.
Baldwin graduated from high school in 1942. Unable to afford college, he worked in a series of odd jobs, eventually becoming a waiter in Greenwich Village. Living in the heart of the city's bohemian culture fuelled Baldwin's desire to earn his living as an author, and he devoted all of his free time to writing his first novel, in addition to publishing book reviews in the Nation, Commentary and the Partisan Review. At around this time Baldwin met the novelist Richard Wright, who read the manuscript of Baldwin's novel and offered him valuable encouragement. In 1943 Baldwin's stepfather died after years of steadily worsening mental health. Although Baldwin had suffered a great deal from his stepfather's abuse as a child, the elder Baldwin's death affected the author profoundly, forcing him to ponder how the corrosive effects of racism and violence had helped shape the man's deeply disturbed personality -- questions Baldwin later examined in his 1955 essay, 'Notes of a Native Son'. Two years after David Baldwin's death, the young author moved to an isolated cabin in Woodstock, New York, where he continued to work on his novel. During his time in upstate New York, Baldwin was interrogated by the FBI in connection with an army deserter whom he had met once at a party. This encounter with police intimidation stirred Baldwin's suspicion of government authority, and he began to feel increasingly alienated from mainstream American society. Baldwin later recounted this experience in the book-length essay The Devil Finds Work (1976).
In 1948 Baldwin published his first short story, 'Previous Condition', in Commentary. That same year he won a Rosenwald Fellowship, which allowed him to quit his job as a waiter and move to Paris, where he remained for most of the next decade. Although Baldwin still experienced instances of prejudice in Europe, he found that people's attitudes were generally more liberal, particularly in matters concerning race and sexuality, and he later recalled his first years in Paris as a type of intellectual and emotional awakening. During these years he worked steadily on his novel, spending his free time in the company of other expatriate African American writers, notably Wright, with whom he had a frequently antagonistic relationship, and Chester Himes. Baldwin returned to the United States in 1952 with the manuscript of his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, which was published the following year. Largely drawn from Baldwin's own childhood, Go Tell It on the Mountain tells the story of John Grimes, a pious but troubled teenage preacher who contends with his stepfather's abuse, as well as with his emerging awareness of his own homosexuality. At the end of the novel, John asserts his independence from both his stepfather's authority and from the moral judgements of his church as he sets out to live his life according to his true nature. Baldwin addressed the issue of his homosexuality more overtly in his second novel, Giovanni's Room (1956), which tells the story of an American man living in Paris who carries on an affair with an Italian man charged with murder. During this period Baldwin also published an acclaimed short story, 'Sonny's Blues' in the Partisan Review (1957).
In 1955 Baldwin again returned to the United States, this time to oversee the production of his first play, The Amen Corner. The play revolves around the character of the strong-willed but troubled Reverend Sister Margaret, leader of a church in Harlem, as she attempts to reconcile her desire for worldly happiness and familial love with her selfless devotion to her religion. Based on Baldwin's personal experiences as a teenage preacher, the play is a harsh indictment of the hypocrisy and greed of organised Christianity; the work also questions the notion that African Americans should seek salvation through renunciation, an act that Baldwin regarded as ultimately empty and futile. The Amen Corner premiered at Howard University in Washington, DC in 1955 and was revived a decade later, first at the Robertson Playhouse in Los Angeles in March 1964 and again at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theatre in April 1965. At the height of the Civil Rights struggle, Baldwin wrote a second play, Blues for Mr Charlie (1964). Based on real events, the play tells the story of the murder of an African American man by a Southern racist and the trial that ensues. In recounting the white man's acquittal by an all-white jury, Baldwin exposes society's broader role in the crime, suggesting that all Americans, black and white, are inextricably complicit in the nation's racist legacy. The play debuted at New York's American National Theatre and Academy on 23 April 1964 and was directed by Burgess Meredith.
Baldwin's reputation as a serious commentator on contemporary American society was firmly established with the publication in 1955 of his first work of non-fiction, the essay collection Notes of a Native Son. In the brief opening essay, 'Autobiographical Notes', Baldwin outlined his attitude toward writing. In essence, Baldwin argued, a person must strive for self-understanding, with an unflinching eye for the truth, before he or she can become a vital member of society. The last line of the essay offers one of the most straightforward and eloquent expressions of Baldwin's artistic mission: 'I want to be an honest man and a good writer.' In the title essay Baldwin delves into his antagonistic relationship with his stepfather, reconciling himself to David Baldwin's personality while reflecting on the ways that the man's anger toward racism ultimately undermined his sanity. A second collection of essays, Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son, followed in 1961.
In 1957, as the Civil Rights Movement increasingly dominated the news, Baldwin moved back to the United States, intent on playing a more direct role in the mounting struggle against segregation and discrimination. He participated in numerous protests, while meeting with politicians to argue that civil rights issues should become central to the government's domestic policies. Baldwin's experiences as an activist during these years, coupled with his perceptions of America's increasingly volatile political climate, served as the catalyst for his 1963 collection of essays, The Fire Next Time. Regarded by many critics as his most insightful, and inflammatory, work, The Fire Next Time examines the issue of race through an in-depth analysis of the Black Muslim party. Baldwin's first short-story collection, Going to Meet the Man, appeared in 1965, although it was comprised primarily of older work and was generally not well-received by reviewers. His next novel, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), also disappointed critics. In 1972 Baldwin published a screenplay, One Day When I Was Lost: A Scenario Based on Alex Haley's 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X', but it was never produced. His later works include the novel If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), Jimmy's Blues: Selected Poems (1983) and The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985). In 1985 Baldwin published The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985. He died of cancer on 1 December 1987 in St Paul de Vence, France. In 1998 Toni Morrison edited two volumes of Baldwin's collected works for the Library of America: James Baldwin: Collected Essays and James Baldwin: Early Novels and Stories.
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Baldwin, James, 1924-1987
from Literature Online biography
Published in Cambridge, 2006, by Chadwyck-Healey (a ProQuest Information and Learning Company)
Copyright © 2006 ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All Rights Reserved.
James Baldwin (1924-1987), African American novelist, essayist, playwright and poet, is widely regarded as one of the most insightful, honest American authors of the second half of the twentieth century. An astute observer of political life in the United States, Baldwin dedicated his career to exposing the racial injustice at the heart of American society in a prose style that is consistently direct, eloquent and forceful. In such works as Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Notes of a Native Son (1955) and The Fire Next Time (1963), Baldwin drew from events in his own life in order to achieve an understanding of the critical social issues of his era. Baldwin's insights into race and sexuality derived from personal experience, and even his fictional writings are deeply autobiographical. Indeed, a passionate concern for truth runs throughout Baldwin's body of work. By analysing their own lives with absolute honesty, Baldwin argued in the preface to his play The Amen Corner (first produced in 1955; published in 1968), all Americans have the potential to understand and accept the fact that African Americans are vital members of American society. Furthermore, only after recognising this reality, Baldwin asserted, can America finally hope to 'become a nation and possibly a great one'. A tireless advocate of social equality, Baldwin played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, travelling throughout the South during the tense days of desegregation and devoting much of his writing of the period to examining possible solutions to the problem of social injustice in the United States. By the end of his life Baldwin had gained recognition as one of America's most important literary voices, and his works have influenced a number of writers, among them Toni Morrison , Amiri Baraka and Melvin Dixon .
James Baldwin was born James Arthur Jones on 2 August 1924 in Harlem. His mother, Emma Berdis Jones, was a housekeeper; Baldwin never knew his biological father. When he was three years old his mother married David Baldwin, a factory worker, who adopted his wife's young son. David Baldwin was a deeply religious man and a strict, often cruel disciplinarian, the cause of constant family strife throughout the younger Baldwin's childhood. Baldwin found escape in reading and writing, and at the age of 12, he published his first story in a church newsletter. At around this time, while attending Frederick Douglass Junior High School, Baldwin met the Harlem Renaissance poet, Countee Cullen, who mentored the aspiring writer, offering him advice on his short stories and helping him gain acceptance to the elite DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. Baldwin wrote a number of stories, plays and poems in high school and was an editor of the school's literary magazine. During these years Baldwin also served as a preacher at a Pentecostal church, an experience that would later form the basis of his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain.
Baldwin graduated from high school in 1942. Unable to afford college, he worked in a series of odd jobs, eventually becoming a waiter in Greenwich Village. Living in the heart of the city's bohemian culture fuelled Baldwin's desire to earn his living as an author, and he devoted all of his free time to writing his first novel, in addition to publishing book reviews in the Nation, Commentary and the Partisan Review. At around this time Baldwin met the novelist Richard Wright, who read the manuscript of Baldwin's novel and offered him valuable encouragement. In 1943 Baldwin's stepfather died after years of steadily worsening mental health. Although Baldwin had suffered a great deal from his stepfather's abuse as a child, the elder Baldwin's death affected the author profoundly, forcing him to ponder how the corrosive effects of racism and violence had helped shape the man's deeply disturbed personality -- questions Baldwin later examined in his 1955 essay, 'Notes of a Native Son'. Two years after David Baldwin's death, the young author moved to an isolated cabin in Woodstock, New York, where he continued to work on his novel. During his time in upstate New York, Baldwin was interrogated by the FBI in connection with an army deserter whom he had met once at a party. This encounter with police intimidation stirred Baldwin's suspicion of government authority, and he began to feel increasingly alienated from mainstream American society. Baldwin later recounted this experience in the book-length essay The Devil Finds Work (1976).
In 1948 Baldwin published his first short story, 'Previous Condition', in Commentary. That same year he won a Rosenwald Fellowship, which allowed him to quit his job as a waiter and move to Paris, where he remained for most of the next decade. Although Baldwin still experienced instances of prejudice in Europe, he found that people's attitudes were generally more liberal, particularly in matters concerning race and sexuality, and he later recalled his first years in Paris as a type of intellectual and emotional awakening. During these years he worked steadily on his novel, spending his free time in the company of other expatriate African American writers, notably Wright, with whom he had a frequently antagonistic relationship, and Chester Himes. Baldwin returned to the United States in 1952 with the manuscript of his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, which was published the following year. Largely drawn from Baldwin's own childhood, Go Tell It on the Mountain tells the story of John Grimes, a pious but troubled teenage preacher who contends with his stepfather's abuse, as well as with his emerging awareness of his own homosexuality. At the end of the novel, John asserts his independence from both his stepfather's authority and from the moral judgements of his church as he sets out to live his life according to his true nature. Baldwin addressed the issue of his homosexuality more overtly in his second novel, Giovanni's Room (1956), which tells the story of an American man living in Paris who carries on an affair with an Italian man charged with murder. During this period Baldwin also published an acclaimed short story, 'Sonny's Blues' in the Partisan Review (1957).
In 1955 Baldwin again returned to the United States, this time to oversee the production of his first play, The Amen Corner. The play revolves around the character of the strong-willed but troubled Reverend Sister Margaret, leader of a church in Harlem, as she attempts to reconcile her desire for worldly happiness and familial love with her selfless devotion to her religion. Based on Baldwin's personal experiences as a teenage preacher, the play is a harsh indictment of the hypocrisy and greed of organised Christianity; the work also questions the notion that African Americans should seek salvation through renunciation, an act that Baldwin regarded as ultimately empty and futile. The Amen Corner premiered at Howard University in Washington, DC in 1955 and was revived a decade later, first at the Robertson Playhouse in Los Angeles in March 1964 and again at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theatre in April 1965. At the height of the Civil Rights struggle, Baldwin wrote a second play, Blues for Mr Charlie (1964). Based on real events, the play tells the story of the murder of an African American man by a Southern racist and the trial that ensues. In recounting the white man's acquittal by an all-white jury, Baldwin exposes society's broader role in the crime, suggesting that all Americans, black and white, are inextricably complicit in the nation's racist legacy. The play debuted at New York's American National Theatre and Academy on 23 April 1964 and was directed by Burgess Meredith.
Baldwin's reputation as a serious commentator on contemporary American society was firmly established with the publication in 1955 of his first work of non-fiction, the essay collection Notes of a Native Son. In the brief opening essay, 'Autobiographical Notes', Baldwin outlined his attitude toward writing. In essence, Baldwin argued, a person must strive for self-understanding, with an unflinching eye for the truth, before he or she can become a vital member of society. The last line of the essay offers one of the most straightforward and eloquent expressions of Baldwin's artistic mission: 'I want to be an honest man and a good writer.' In the title essay Baldwin delves into his antagonistic relationship with his stepfather, reconciling himself to David Baldwin's personality while reflecting on the ways that the man's anger toward racism ultimately undermined his sanity. A second collection of essays, Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son, followed in 1961.
In 1957, as the Civil Rights Movement increasingly dominated the news, Baldwin moved back to the United States, intent on playing a more direct role in the mounting struggle against segregation and discrimination. He participated in numerous protests, while meeting with politicians to argue that civil rights issues should become central to the government's domestic policies. Baldwin's experiences as an activist during these years, coupled with his perceptions of America's increasingly volatile political climate, served as the catalyst for his 1963 collection of essays, The Fire Next Time. Regarded by many critics as his most insightful, and inflammatory, work, The Fire Next Time examines the issue of race through an in-depth analysis of the Black Muslim party. Baldwin's first short-story collection, Going to Meet the Man, appeared in 1965, although it was comprised primarily of older work and was generally not well-received by reviewers. His next novel, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), also disappointed critics. In 1972 Baldwin published a screenplay, One Day When I Was Lost: A Scenario Based on Alex Haley's 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X', but it was never produced. His later works include the novel If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), Jimmy's Blues: Selected Poems (1983) and The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985). In 1985 Baldwin published The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985. He died of cancer on 1 December 1987 in St Paul de Vence, France. In 1998 Toni Morrison edited two volumes of Baldwin's collected works for the Library of America: James Baldwin: Collected Essays and James Baldwin: Early Novels and Stories.
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