What is James Baldwin best known for?
James Arthur Baldwin is an essays writer and a poet who have written a number of novels poems and essays like No Name in Streets.
James Baldwin date of birth/ age
Baldwin was born on August 2nd, 1924, in Harlem in New York.
James Baldwin family
His stepfather was David Baldwin who was a Baptist preacher from New Orleans.
James Baldwin wife
Baldwin was in a relationship with Lucien Happer Berger who was a Swiss man. The two met in Paris but their relationship didn’t last and broke up two years later.
Education
Baldwin attended DeWitt Clinton High School in Pronx and graduated in 1942
What did James Baldwin write about?
Baldwin began his writing career in 1953 when he published his very first novel named Go Tell it on the Mountain. This is when he became a major literary voice. In 1961 he published his militant and candid essays which were found in Nobody Knows My Name and also The Fire Next time in 1963 which were able to compare emerging Civil Rights Movement of 1960s. During the speech of the civil right leader on I Have. Dream in 1963 he gave support to Martin Luther King Jr at the Lincoln Memorial.
In 1956 Baldwin released his second novel named Giovanni’s Room where he struggled with sexual, racial and spiritual identities where he wanted to illustrate the treatment, he faced by characterization of the main characters in the homosexual love validity.
In 1962 he was out with Another Country where he was able to explore the spectrum of heterosexual and homosexual love and it’s complexity unabashedly. From 1965 his themes mainly dwell in sexual orientation, racism and power of love multifaceted. This started with Going To Meet the Man in 1965, followed by Tell Me How Long The Train’s Been Gone in 1968 then If Beale Street Could Talk in 1974 and Just Above My Head in 1979.
Baldwin was good in essays than novels and appeared in literary magazines like the Harper’s, Partisan Reviewand The New Yorker. His essays like The Fire Next Time, Everybody’s Protest Novel and No Name in the Street made him emerge as among the best American Writers in the mid twentieth century. In 1964 he wrote an essay called Blues For Mister Charlie. This was followed by another in 1968 named Amen Corner. In 1985 Baldwin published a group of poems.
James Baldwin books/poems/essays
- Notes of a Native Son in 1955
- Nobody Knows My Name in 1961
- Fire Next Time in 1963
- No Name in Streets in 1972.
- The Devil Finds Work in 1976
- The Evidenxe of Things Not Seen in 1985.
What was Baldwin’s writing style?
Baldwin writings majored in the aspects of the blacks experience with the themes rotating in the relationship between police and black urban male dwellers and the black church culture. He also come up music a of gospel, jazz and blues which is the central force in the world of his characters.
When he returned to the United States and took part in the Civil Rights Movement but when Martin Luther King was assassinated Baldwin returned to Europe in fear of racism that he was facing in the United States.
James Baldwin Death
James Baldwin died in 1987 in France which was his adopted home. However, his cause of death remains unknown.