Going to meet James Baldwin

Guest edited by Andrew Kelly

Going to meet James Baldwin

Guest edited by Andrew Kelly

James Baldwin was an activist, public intellectual and a guide for understanding the nuances of race. In this edition we explore how he’s still an inspiration for a new generation taking on the persistent issues and challenges he addressed, but which remain unresolved.

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.’

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.’

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.’

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.’

Black T-shirts & James Baldwin

Inua Ellams

‘On many occasions I stared at photographs of him, into the large pool of his dark eyes.’

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’.’

Baldwin and the truth

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.’
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