Going to meet James Baldwin
James Baldwin was an activist, public intellectual and a guide for understanding the nuances of race. In this edition we explore how he remains an inspiration for a new generation taking on the persistent issues and challenges he addressed, but which remained unresolved.
Edited by: Andrew Kelly
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My James Baldwin great reading adventure
Andrew Kelly
"I do not regret for one moment the time I have spent with James Baldwin. I have learned about race and sex, love and hate, cities and creativity, hope and the future."
Andrew Kelly on some of the many things that James Baldwin has taught him over his lifetime.
The strength to love
Edson Burton
"My rage was not against a race or a class but against poverty. Baldwin reminds me to stick with my own soul rather than give in to othering."
Edson Burton on how James Baldwin inspired him to love those who rejected him.
Autobiographical notes
Chitra Ramaswamy
"The most beautifully wry words. Words that make me gasp every time I read them. As though I’ve ingested them underwater. While holding my breath."
Chita Ramaswamy counts the many ways in which she is like James Baldwin.
Reviving the art of ambivalence
Vanessa Kisuule
"His face framed with a film noir scribble of smoke, he lights a match and touches it to the end of her cigarette, a gesture so subtle and intimate it makes me want to be the smoke surrounding them."
Poet Vanessa Kisuule takes solace from James Baldwin in an increasingly polarised, frenetic world and hopes he would approve of her.
Black T-shirts & James Baldwin
Inua Ellams
"On many occasions I stared at photographs of him, into the large pool of his dark eyes."
Inua Ellams asks his friend Nii Parkes for inspiration for his play text as they riff about James Baldwin and his work.
Reading Baldwin through life
Jack Parlett
"All too familiar with the racism and exclusivity of white gay spaces, Baldwin once wrote ‘I do not like people whose principal aim is pleasure’."
Jack Parlett on James Baldwin's engagement with the community of Cherry Grove, Fire Island, a haven for queer people from NYC since the 1930s.
Baldwin and the truth
Taíno Mendez
"Baldwin was publicly rebuked in an infamous homophobic essay that aimed to define a purely hetero-patriarchal Black American future – Blackness and queerness should not exist in the same body."
Mendez on James Baldwin. Mendez is a London-based novelist and critic. Their novel, Rainbow Milk, was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize.