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Biography
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Died December 1,1987.
James Arthur Baldwin is recognized as one of the most important twentieth-century American writers. In his works, he exposed racial and sexual polarization in American society and challenged readers to confront and resolve these differences. Baldwin's influence and popularity peaked during the 1960s, when he was regarded as the leading spokesperson of the civil rights movement.
Baldwin was born in Harlem, New York,on August 2, 1924. His stepfather, a Pentecostal preacher, struggled to support his large family. As a youth, Baldwin was an excellent student who sought to escape his impoverished environment by reading, writing, and attending movies and plays. He served as a junior minister at the Fireside Pentecostal assembly as a teenager. After graduating from high school in 1942, Baldwin took a job in Elle Meade, New Jersey, to help support his brothers and sisters. Following his stepfather's death in 1943, Baldwin, determined to make writing his profession, moved to Greenwich Village and began a novel. Five years later he moved to Paris; he remained in France for most of his life.
In Paris, Baldwin accepted his heritage, and admitted his bisexuality. He also completed his first novel, Go Tell It On The Mountain (1953), which many critics consider his most accomplished. Baldwin's next novel, Giovanni's Room (1956), was controversial, apparently because of his openly homosexual content. Another Country (1962) provoked more debate and received largely negative reviews due to its candid depiction of sexual relations.
Baldwin's nonfiction works have also received substantial critical attention. The essay "Everybody's Protest Novel" (1949) generated controversy for its attack on authors of protest fiction. Critics praised this essay and those collected in Notes of a Native Son (1955), Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961), and The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, !948-1985 (1985). The book The Fire Next Time (1963) is considered both a passionate plea for reconciliation between the races and a manifesto for black liberation.
Baldwin was one of the few black authors to have had more than one play produced on Broadway.Both The Amen Corner (1955) and Blues for Mister Charlie (1964) had successful Broadway runs and numerous revivals. In the late 1960s and 1970s much of Baldwin's fiction was influenced by his involvement in the civil rights movement. He saw his writing as an attempt to alter the daily environment of American blacks. The short stories collected in Going to Meet the Man (1965) center on the problems of black protagonists living amid racial strife in the United States. The novel Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968) centers on two brother's attempts to escape the ghetto, and If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) examines the plight of a young man unjustly caught in the American judicial system. Just Above My Head (1979) returns to the themes of religion and sexuality with a complex story of a homosexual gospel singer.
Baldwin died from stomach cancer in St. Paul de Vence, France, on December 1, 1987. At the time, he had been working on two projects: a play, The Welcome Table, and a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. Baldwin's death prompted generally laudatory reassessments of his career and literary legacy.