James Baldwin (August 2nd, 1924 – December 1st, 1987) was a writer and social critic born in New York City and grew up in Harlem, USA.
Baldwin’s courage, intelligence, and humility steered him past less successful paths and towards a meaningful life as a writer and social commenter. His essays, in collections such as Notes of a Native Son, explored race, sex, and class distinctions in the West. His writings reflected and discussed these issues he faced as a Black man but also ones he faced as a homosexual man.
His life was so full of travel, fascinating people, heartbreaking realisations, and all the while writing about his thoughts and experiences, that it is best to hear it from the man himself. It cannot be contained in a blog alone.
Watch a BBC interview with the great man next, and below find further links to purchase his essays, books, and plays.
It should be noted that if Baldwin was a prominent figure still alive and working today he would be undoubtedly mocked for being a “snowflake” or a “bleeding heart liberal”. Men like Baldwin forged the paths for today’s LGBT activists, Black Lives Matter, and the rest of the open-minded, open-hearted “SJW” types. If it wasn’t for strong, intelligent, and critically-minded men and women like Baldwin there would never have been such progress in the last 50 years.
Here’s to yet more progress desperately needed in today’s Western world- and let us not forget Malcolm X’s claim that if ‘one is a citizen, one should not have to fight for one’s civil rights’. Humans are humans, and we all deserve to be treated humanely.
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