James Baldwin: One Who Rose Beyond All Labels of Oppression

“A writer is by definition a disturber of the peace.” – James Baldwin.

Deconstructing the narratives of living as a Black queer person in America requires more than any materialistic privilege. It demands a voice that could be heard over a thousand noises stomping on it. It takes an unshakable faith in one’s own experience. That’s what James Baldwin possessed; the voice, and the faith, which were reflected in the words he wrote and the life he lived. As an ardent social observer, Baldwin’s works are a major breakthrough for the American imagination; he brought experiences of Black folks from the margins and redefined narratives of Black bitterness. His famous works The Fire next time and Nobody knows my Name: more notes of a native son document the lived realities of Blacks living in America. 

James Arthur Baldwin (1942-1987) was the eldest child of nine siblings who became a preacher in the church at a young age. As a teenager, he developed complex views on Christianity in particular and God in general. These led him to form serpentine relations with the religious symbols, themes, and tones, which greatly shaped his later writings. Baldwin was an active member of the literary club in high school and served as the literary magazine editor. After losing his father during the Harlem Race Riot of 1943, he took to writing seriously. In 1944, he met the African American writer Richard Wright who became his mentor. The two had some rifts due to the conflicting approaches towards the subject of race. Burdened with racial discrimination in America and homophobia in Harlem, Baldwin left for Paris in 1948 on a scholarship to work on his first novel. In Paris, he met Maya Angelou and developed a great bond as a writer and a friend. He used to travel to Istanbul during the 60s, where he spent time working on different essays. Being outside America, Baldwin developed an outsider’s perspective to write about racism and other forms of oppression in the US. The violence against black leaders in the US during the 1960s disturbed him; he had an emotional breakdown following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. He went to the US to participate in the civil rights movement and to attend “The Negro Writer’s Vision of America” where he announced that “My story, once told, will liberate America”. Baldwin passed away in 1987 after a short battle with abdomen cancer.

James Baldwin, 1964. Photo by Jean-Regis Rouston/Roger Viollet/Getty Images.

Being a witness to the racial strife, Baldwin talks about the psychic damage racism does to Black folks. Through his numerous works, he challenged the definition of Negro problem and redefined it to center the whites and the damage they do to the Black community. This makes a shift from the victimization of Negros to holding accountability of the Whites. Baldwin has a compelling way of storytelling that questions the normative problem of viewing a Negro, a Black man merely as an instrument of white ownership. He refrained from the label of a Black writer and rather insisted on being called an American writer. Through his works, Black lives have discovered more intricate dimensions, thereby creating a narrative that challenges essentialism. His fiction included romantic affairs between people of different races, thereby drawing the realities of a multi-racial society. Baldwin has refined the edges of an essay as an art form that prompts discursive action and tangible solutions to the problems society faces. His essays are more than a mere culmination of ideas; they try to speak about the lived realities of Black folks and how they navigate in an ecosystem dominated by Whites. 

James Baldwin at Istanbul. (Source: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Sedat Pakay ©1965)

Scholars argue that Baldwin’s piece “I am not your Negro” is highly influenced by his complex sexuality. Some believe that his intersectional identity made him an outsider throughout his life. Michelle Gordon, an assistant professor at Emory University, says to NBC, “Being Black in America. Being Black and Gay in America. Being a Black American in Europe. It all gives him an outsider status, which allows him the ability to see the world so clearly because he does not quite fit. ” His 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room started controversies about his homosexuality; he vocalized against America’s homophobia by advocating the gender-blind power of love. A professor of queer studies Matt Brim has attempted to queer Baldwin’s writings in his book Baldwin and the queer imagination.

Though his works speak of how he navigated the multiple identities he carried; as a grandson of a slave, as a writer, as a bisexual man, as a Black, he refused to have any labels attached. Though some feminists criticize his female characters for being male-oriented, Baldwin has surely brought the intricacies of the real world to the forefront. Baldwin turned to art to cope with his life’s suffering and troubles, and the words served him with the same sincerity he had for the world.  

REFERENCES

• https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/james-baldwin
• https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/james-baldwin-s-sexuality-complicated-influential-n717706
• Trudier Harris. Black Women in the Fiction of James Baldwin. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985) 230 pp
• https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/writer-definition-disturber-peace-james-baldwin