JAMES BALDWIN was born on August 2, 1924, and educated in New York.
His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared in 1953 to
excellent reviews and immediately was recognized as establishing a
profound and permanent new voice in American letters. "Mountain is
the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything
else," he remarked. Baldwin's play The Amen Corner was first
performed at Howard University in 1955 (it was staged commercially
in the 1960s), and his acclaimed collection of essays Notes of a
Native Son, was published the same year. A second collection of
essays, Nobody Knows My Name, was published in 1961 between his
novels Giovanni's Room (1956) and Another Country (1961).
The appearance of The Fire Next Time in 1963, just as the civil
rights movement was exploding across the American South, galvanized
the nation and continues to reverberate as perhaps the most
prophetic and defining statement ever written of the continuing
costs of Americans' refusal to face their own history. It became a
national bestseller, and Baldwin was featured on the cover of Time
magazine. Critic Irving Howe said that The Fire Next Time achieved
"heights of passionate exhortation unmatched in modern American
writing." In 1964 Blues for Mister Charlie, his play based on the
murder of a young black man in Mississippi, was produced by the
Actors Studio in New York. That same year, Baldwin was made a
member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and
collaborated with the photographer Richard Avedon on Nothing
Personal, a series of portraits of America intended as a eulogy for
the slain Medger Evers. A collection of short stories, Going to
Meet the Man, was published in 1965, and in 1968, Tell Me How Long
the Train's Been Gone, his last novel of the 1960s appeared.
In the 1970s he wrote two more collections of essays and cultural
criticism: No Name in the Street (1972) and The Devil Finds Work
(1976). He produced two novels: the bestselling If Beale Street
Could Talk (1974) and Just Above My Head (1979) and also a
children's book Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood
(1976). He collaborated with Margaret Mead on A Rap on Race (1971)
and with the poet-activist Nikki Giovanni on A Dialogue (1973). He
also adapted Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X into One
Day When I Was Lost.
In the remaining years of his life, Baldwin produced a volume of
poetry, Jimmy's Blues (1983), and a final collection of essays, The
Price of the Ticket. Baldwin's last work, The Evidence of Things
Not Seen (1985), was prompted by a series of child murders in
Atlanta. Baldwin was made a Commander of the French Legion of Honor
in June 1986. Among the other awards he received are a Eugene F.
Saxon Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald fellowship, a Guggenheim
fellowship, a Partisan Review fellowship, and a Ford Foundation
grant.
James Baldwin died at his home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in France on
December 1, 1987.
“With vivid imagery, with lavish attention to details, Mr. Baldwin
has told his feverish story.” —The New York Times
“Brutal, objective and compassionate.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“It is written with poetic intensity and great narrative skill.”
—Harper’s
“Strong and powerful.” —Commonweal
“A sense of reality and vitality that is truly extraordinary. . . .
He knows Harlem, his people, and the language they use.” —Chicago
Sun-Times
“This is a distinctive book, both realistic and brutal, but a novel
of extraordinary sensitivity and poetry.” —Chicago Sunday Tribune
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