Seeing his talent and potential, she offered to take him to "real" plays. Īs told in "Notes of a Native Son", when he was 10 years old, Baldwin wrote a play that was directed by a teacher at his school. 24 on 128th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues in Harlem where he wrote the school song, which was used until the school closed. I didn't know how I would use my mind, or even if I could, but that was the only thing I had to use." Baldwin attended P.S.
Education īaldwin said, "I knew I was black, of course, but I also knew I was smart. During World War II, Baldwin worked laying track in a defense-related capacity. Not only would the day of the funeral be Baldwin's 19th birthday, it would also be that of the Harlem riot of 1943, an event portrayed at the beginning of his "Notes of a Native Son" essay. His stepfather died of tuberculosis in the summer of 1943, on the day his last child was born, just before Baldwin turned 19. At the age of 10, he was teased and abused by two New York police officers, an instance of the racist harassment by the NYPD that he would experience again as a teenager and document in his essays. īaldwin spent much time caring for his several younger brothers and sisters. His educators deemed him gifted, and in 1937, at the age of 13, he wrote his first article, titled "Harlem-Then and Now", which was published in his school's magazine, The Douglass Pilot.
īy the time Baldwin had reached adolescence, he had discovered his passion for writing. His intelligence, combined with the persecution he endured in his stepfather's home, drove Baldwin to spend much of his time alone in libraries. The family was poor, and Baldwin's stepfather, to whom he referred in essays as his father, treated him more harshly than his biological children. David Baldwin also had a son from a previous marriage who was nine years older than James. Jones married a Baptist preacher, David Baldwin with whom she had eight children between 19. A native of an impoverished community on Deal Island, Maryland, Jones moved to Harlem where Baldwin was born, in Harlem Hospital in New York. James Arthur Baldwin was born to Emma Berdis Jones who had left Baldwin's biological father because of his drug abuse. Such dynamics are prominent in Baldwin's second novel, Giovanni's Room, which was written in 1956, well before the gay liberation movement. These characters often face internal and external obstacles in their search for social- and self-acceptance. Baldwin's protagonists are often but not exclusively African American, and gay and bisexual men frequently feature as protagonists in his literature. Themes of masculinity, sexuality, race, and class intertwine to create intricate narratives that run parallel with some of the major political movements toward social change in mid-twentieth-century America, such as the civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement. One of his novels, If Beale Street Could Talk, was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film of the same name in 2018, directed and produced by Barry Jenkins.īaldwin's novels, short stories, and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures. An unfinished manuscript, Remember This House, was expanded and adapted for cinema as the Academy Award–nominated documentary film I Am Not Your Negro (2016). Some of Baldwin's essays are book-length, including The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Street (1972), and The Devil Finds Work (1976). His essays, collected in Notes of a Native Son (1955), explore intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in the United States during the mid twentieth-century. James Arthur Baldwin (Aug– December 1, 1987) was an American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist.
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