List of Illustrations ix
Preface: Sightings xiii
Acknowledgments xxv
Introduction: From Harlem to Istanbul 1
1. Between Friends: Looking for Baldwin in Constantinople 31
2. Queer Orientalisms in Another Country 91
3. Staging Masculinity in Dusenin Dostu 141
4. East to South: Homosexual Panic, the Old Country, and No Name in
the Street 197
Conclusion: Welcome Tables East and West 249
Notes 265
Bibliography 331
Index 359
Study of Baldwin's little-known decade in Turkey
Magdalena J. Zaborowska is Associate Professor in the Program in American Culture and the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of How We Found America: Reading Gender through East-European Immigrant Narratives; the editor of Other Americans, Other Americas: The Politics and Poetics of Multiculturalism; and a co-editor of Over the Wall/After the Fall: Post-Communist Cultures Through an East-West Gaze and The Puritan Origins of American Sex: Religion, Sexuality, and National Identity in American Literature.
"Illustrated with stunning photographs, James Baldwin's Turkish Decade presents fascinating and little-known details about Baldwin's Turkey and offers a new way of reading his works from the 1960s to the early 1970s. A small, throwaway reference to Istanbul in Another Country now appears momentous." Werner Sollors, Henry B. And Anne M. Cabot Professor of English and African American Studies, Harvard University "Magdalena J. Zaborowska's excellent scholarship unearths new and little-known material about James Baldwin's time in Turkey, particularly through her interviews with Baldwin's friends and colleagues in Istanbul. Her original analyses of Baldwin's work in the context of his Turkish experiences are also outstanding." David Leeming, author of James Baldwin: A Biography "Drawing on oral history, archival research, literary analysis, cultural studies, and personal narrative/(auto)ethnography, Magdalena J. Zaborowska renders a multitextured reading of James Baldwin's years in Istanbul. No one else has so thoroughly examined the influence of those years on Baldwin's work, and anyone who comes after will have to cite Zaborowska. And I dare say that no one will be able to capture this story as well as she has. James Baldwin's Turkish Decade will change the field of Baldwin studies."--E. Patrick Johnson, co-editor of Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology "In James Baldwin's Turkish Decade, Magdalena J. Zaborowska, a professor of immigrant and African-American literature, sets out to explain not only the enduring attraction the city had for Baldwin but its importance for the rest of his career...Zaborowska is a charming companion as she follows Baldwin's steps through Turkey, brimming with enthusiasm at the sights and at the warmth of her reception by his friends...she makes us feel how necessary such a refuge was as the sixties wore on." Claudia Roth Pierpont, The New Yorker, 9th Feb 2009 "Magdalena J. Zaborowska's scholarly yet personal new book fills in details of an important but little explored period in the life of James Baldwin...Zaborowska's study is the first to focus completely on Turkey and the impact that living in a country "not east or west" had on the author's work...some of the richest and most illuminating writing on the author...Overall, with its wealth of personal insights, and highlighted by evocative photographs, extensive notes, and a wide ranging bibliography, Magdalena Zaborowska's work gives us an ultimately valuable addition to our understanding of the life and work of James Baldwin." Reginald Harris, Lambda Literary Foundation, Sept 2009 "James Baldwin's Turkish Decade, adds a substantial new dimension to the revival by guiding us through an enigmatic chapter of his cosmopolitan wanderings. From 1961 to 1971, Baldwin's chief residence was Istanbul, where he worked on several books, including Another Country, The Fire Next Time and the book-length essay, No Name in the street. The details of this unlikely sojourn are not unknown (in the TLS of June 15, 2007, James Campbell explored Baldwin's fascinating correspondence from the period), yet the Turkish years have waited for someone to chart exactly what they meant for his literary and intellectual development. As Zaborowska reveals, the capital on the margin between East and West, Christianity and Islam, felt as much like home to Baldwin as anywhere else. In its seemingly carefree amalgamated tolerance, it reminded him of Greenwich Villiage and Paris, yet was more culturally free than either... Zaborowska's ambitious and original book brings the Turkish decade to life. Part travelogue, part "unapologetically autobiographical" scholarly memoir, its aim is to use Baldwin's Turkish years to "compel a new narrative space, a new telling of his life and of black experience"." - Tom F. Wright, Times Literary Supplement, June 1st 2012
"Illustrated with stunning photographs, James Baldwin's Turkish Decade presents fascinating and little-known details about Baldwin's Turkey and offers a new way of reading his works from the 1960s to the early 1970s. A small, throwaway reference to Istanbul in Another Country now appears momentous." Werner Sollors, Henry B. And Anne M. Cabot Professor of English and African American Studies, Harvard University "Magdalena J. Zaborowska's excellent scholarship unearths new and little-known material about James Baldwin's time in Turkey, particularly through her interviews with Baldwin's friends and colleagues in Istanbul. Her original analyses of Baldwin's work in the context of his Turkish experiences are also outstanding." David Leeming, author of James Baldwin: A Biography "Drawing on oral history, archival research, literary analysis, cultural studies, and personal narrative/(auto)ethnography, Magdalena J. Zaborowska renders a multitextured reading of James Baldwin's years in Istanbul. No one else has so thoroughly examined the influence of those years on Baldwin's work, and anyone who comes after will have to cite Zaborowska. And I dare say that no one will be able to capture this story as well as she has. James Baldwin's Turkish Decade will change the field of Baldwin studies."--E. Patrick Johnson, co-editor of Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology "In James Baldwin's Turkish Decade, Magdalena J. Zaborowska, a professor of immigrant and African-American literature, sets out to explain not only the enduring attraction the city had for Baldwin but its importance for the rest of his career...Zaborowska is a charming companion as she follows Baldwin's steps through Turkey, brimming with enthusiasm at the sights and at the warmth of her reception by his friends...she makes us feel how necessary such a refuge was as the sixties wore on." Claudia Roth Pierpont, The New Yorker, 9th Feb 2009 "Magdalena J. Zaborowska's scholarly yet personal new book fills in details of an important but little explored period in the life of James Baldwin...Zaborowska's study is the first to focus completely on Turkey and the impact that living in a country "not east or west" had on the author's work...some of the richest and most illuminating writing on the author...Overall, with its wealth of personal insights, and highlighted by evocative photographs, extensive notes, and a wide ranging bibliography, Magdalena Zaborowska's work gives us an ultimately valuable addition to our understanding of the life and work of James Baldwin." Reginald Harris, Lambda Literary Foundation, Sept 2009 "James Baldwin's Turkish Decade, adds a substantial new dimension to the revival by guiding us through an enigmatic chapter of his cosmopolitan wanderings. From 1961 to 1971, Baldwin's chief residence was Istanbul, where he worked on several books, including Another Country, The Fire Next Time and the book-length essay, No Name in the street. The details of this unlikely sojourn are not unknown (in the TLS of June 15, 2007, James Campbell explored Baldwin's fascinating correspondence from the period), yet the Turkish years have waited for someone to chart exactly what they meant for his literary and intellectual development. As Zaborowska reveals, the capital on the margin between East and West, Christianity and Islam, felt as much like home to Baldwin as anywhere else. In its seemingly carefree amalgamated tolerance, it reminded him of Greenwich Villiage and Paris, yet was more culturally free than either... Zaborowska's ambitious and original book brings the Turkish decade to life. Part travelogue, part "unapologetically autobiographical" scholarly memoir, its aim is to use Baldwin's Turkish years to "compel a new narrative space, a new telling of his life and of black experience"." - Tom F. Wright, Times Literary Supplement, June 1st 2012
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