Introduction The works of James Baldwin are directly related to the issues of racism, religion and personal conflicts, and sexuality and masculinity during Baldwin's years.James Baldwin's works, both fiction and nonfiction were in some instance a direct reflection his life. Through close interpretation you can combine his work to give a "detailed" look into his actual life. However since most writings made by him are all considered true works of literature we can't consider them to be of autobiographical nature. Religion Personal Life Baldwin reflected his own life in various forms. These include autobiographical essays to fiction and drama. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, and play, The Amen Corner, mirror his childhood experiences in the storefront churches of Harlem where James and his stepfather, David Baldwin, preached. The "Autobiographical Notes" section of Notes of a Native Son and the "Down at the Cross" section of The Fire Next Time provide a seemingly realistic view into Baldwin's childhood and his growing involvement with the civil rights movement. Filled with a number of autobiographical passages in Nobody Knows My Name, No Name in the Street and The Devil Finds Word join together to provide a general, somewhat realistic, autobiography. One interest in particular is Baldwin's view on his relationships with Richard Wright ("Alas, Poor Richard") and Norman Mailer ("The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy"), both of which are included in Nobody Knows My Name .(Werner, Craig 45-48) When Baldwin was three years of age his mother married David Baldwin, a Southerner who had made the journey to New York as part of the large stream of black migration north during the times following the First World War. James, t... ... middle of paper ... ...aesthetic: James Baldwin's primer of black American masculinity." African American Review 32.2 (1998): 247. MasterFILE Premier Werner, Craig. "JAMES BALDWIN." Research Guide to Biography & Criticism 1.(1985): 45-48. Book Collection: Nonfiction. Baldwin, James Preservation of Innocence." Zero 1.2 (Summer 1949). Rpt. in Out/Look 6 (Fall 1989), 40-41 Powers, Peter Kerry. "The Treacherous Body: Isolation, Confession, and Community in James Baldwin." 787-813. Duke University Press, 2005. Academic Search Premier. de Romanet, Jerome. "Revisiting Madeleine and `The Outing': James Baldwin's revision of Gide's sexual politics." MELUS 22.1 (1997): 3. MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. Web. 4 Dec. 2010. Robert E. Morsberger. "James Baldwin." Magill Book Reviews. Salem Press, 1998. eNotes.com. 2006. 4 Dec, 2010 james-baldwin-0080505824
Standley, Fred L. "James Baldwin: The Artist as Incorrigible Disturber of the Peace." Southern Humanities Review 4 (1970), 18-30. Rpt. in Fred L. Standley and Nancy V. Burt. Critical Essays on James Baldwin. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988.
Born in Harlem in 1924, James Baldwin grew to be a complex man with many aspects. As an avid reader as a child, Baldwin soon developed the skills to become one of the most talented and strong writers of his time. His first novel was written in 1953 and was called “Go Tell it On the Mountain” and received critical acclaim. More great work from this novelist, essayist, and playwright were to come, one of which was “Notes of a Native Son,” which was first published in Harper’s Magazine in 1955 and was also first known as “Me and My House.” In “Notes of a Native Son,” Baldwin exercises his many talents as an essayist in how he manages to weave narratives and arguments throughout the essay. He is also able to use many of his experiences to prove his points. Baldwin effectively interlaces his narratives, arguments, and experiences so as to reach his central idea and to advocate the overall moral that he has learned to his audience. This is what makes Baldwin so unique in his work: his ability to successfully moralize all people he comes in contact with.
Narrative is a form of writing used by writers to convey their experiences to an audience. James Baldwin is a renowned author for bringing his experience to literature. He grew up Harlem in the 1940’s and 1950’s, a crucial point in history for America due to the escalading conflict between people of different races marked by the race riots of Harlem and Detroit. This environment that Baldwin grew up in inspires and influences him to write the narrative “Notes of a Native Son,” which is based on his experience with racism and the Jim-Crow Laws. The narrative is about his father and his influence on Baldwin’s life, which he analyzes and compares to his own experiences. When Baldwin comes into contact with the harshness of America, he realizes the problems and conflicts he runs into are the same his father faced, and that they will have the same affect on him as they did his father.
James Baldwin is one of the premier essayists of his time. He draws on his experiences in a straightforward, unapologetic manner, which helps achieve his purpose in The Fire Next Time. His style elucidates his arguments for racial harmony and for the understanding of other religions.
When identifying the common theme of Baldwin’s short stories “Sonny’s Blues” and “Going to Meet the Man”, it is clever to first distinguish the writing style of this creative author. Baldwin was a famous writer of his period because of the way he interpreted reality into a story. Around this point in America, racial tension and self-identity between cultures were at a peak and sparked many different ideas towards Baldwin’s writings. Baldwin intentionally expresses himself through his writings to create a realistic voice to his audience, making the story easy to capture a visual of. In one story in particular, “Go Tell It on the Mountain” Baldwin creates a novel
“In 1963, Attorney General Robert Kennedy invited Baldwin and other prominent blacks to discuss the nation's racial situation” (Magill 103). The meeting only reminded Baldwin on how far the nation still had to come (Magill 103). Baldwin continued to write. “During the last 10 years of his life, he produced a number of important works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry” (PBS 4). For awhile he taught and lectured, but soon it became more and more difficult for him to write (Magill 103). The years of drinking, smoking and traveling finally took their toll (Magill 103). “In 1987, James developed stomach cancer, and it took his life at the age of 63 on December 1, in his home in France” (PBS 4). Being a successful black man in the 1900s shows how smart and gifted James Baldwin
James Baldwin was born in Harlem in a time where his African American decent was enough to put more challenges in front of him than the average white American boy faced. His father was a part of the first generation of free black men. He was a bitter, overbearing, paranoid preacher who refused change and hated the white man. Despite his father, his color, and his lack of education, James Baldwin grew up to be a respected author of essays, plays, and novels. While claiming that he was one of the best writers of the era could be argued either way, it is hard to argue the fact that he was indeed one of the most well-known authors of the time.
From slavery being legal, to its abolishment and the Civil Rights Movement, to where we are now in today’s integrated society, it would seem only obvious that this country has made big steps in the adoption of African Americans into American society. However, writers W.E.B. Du Bois and James Baldwin who have lived and documented in between this timeline of events bringing different perspectives to the surface. Du Bois first introduced an idea that Baldwin would later expand, but both authors’ works provide insight to the underlying problem: even though the law has made African Americans equal, the people still have not.
Baldwin and his ancestors share this common rage because of the reflections their culture has had on the rest of society, a society consisting of white men who have thrived on using false impressions as a weapon throughout American history. Baldwin gives credit to the fact that no one can be held responsible for what history has unfolded, but he remains restless for an explanation about the perception of his ancestors as people. In Baldwin?s essay, his rage becomes more directed as the ?power of the white man? becomes relevant to the misfortune of the American Negro (Baldwin 131). This misfortune creates a fire of rage within Baldwin and the American Negro. As Baldwin?s American Negro continues to build the fire, the white man builds an invisible wall around himself to avoid confrontation about the actions of his ?forefathers? (Baldwin 131). Baldwin?s anger burns through his other emotions as he writes about the enslavement of his ancestors and gives the reader a shameful illusion of a Negro slave having to explai...
Baldwin, James. “Notes of a Native Son.” 1955. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998. 63-84.
“The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated”(James Baldwin). James Baldwin lived from August 2, 1924 to December 1, 1987. He was an essayist, playwright, and novelist regarded as a highly insightful, iconic writer with works throughout his career in literature. As an African American male, James Baldwin fought through many struggles, for one having a poverty-stricken family and living in a neighborhood full of drugs, alcohol, violence, and crime. Even with temptation he found his way out through writing, important figures like Richard Wright. He also got into the civil rights movement which provided him the keys for James to compose stories
American literature within the nineteenth-century had many themes, one of which was the portrayal of conflict of an individual in regards to the community. This sort of literary conflict often extended to confrontations with traditions, institutions, or the laws and customs of one’s culture. This specific theme can be found within two select literary works, The Warrior Woman by Maxine Hong Kingston and James Baldwin’s work Going To Meet The Man. Each of these works contains a character that enacts this conflict within the confines of the work and provides the reader with the importance of the conflict with community. By establishing the importance of the conflict in its social, racial, political or historical context, each writer makes a statement about his or her character’s place in America.
Baldwin, James. “Down at the Cross.” 1963. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998: 296-347.
... the miserable life that African Americans had to withstand at the time. From the narrator’s life in Harlem that he loathed, to the drug problems and apprehensions that Sonny was suffering from, to the death of his own daughter Grace, each of these instances serve to show the wretchedness that the narrator and his family had to undergo. The story in relation to Baldwin possibly leads to the conclusion that he was trying to relate this to his own life. At the time before he moved away, he had tried to make a success of his writing career but to no avail. However, the reader can only be left with many more questions as to how Sonny and the narrator were able to overcome these miseries and whether they concluded in the same manner in the life of Baldwin.
James Baldwin had to overcome an extremely challenging life as an outcast to become the prominent writer and person he is known as today. Baldwin was an outcast in society because he was a poor, homosexual, African-American man in a time where blacks were highly discriminated. Baldwin had a very tough childhood, his family was poor, his real father wasn’t around and he was the oldest of eight siblings growing up in Harlem, New York. James Baldwin reflects his life and childhood in the short story “The Rock Pile.” James Baldwin’s life is reflected in “The Rock Pile” and other of his books because of Baldwin’s constant feeling to get out there and show everyone who he really is, his state of contentment after he didn’t receive the