DOCSLIB.ORG

Redemptive Suffering and Spiritual Service in the Works of James Baldwin

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Redemptive Suffering and Spiritual Service in the Works of James Baldwin Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 2-2-2006 Reclaiming the Human Self: Redemptive Suffering and Spiritual Service in the Works of James Baldwin Francine LaRue Allen Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Allen, Francine LaRue, "Reclaiming the Human Self: Redemptive Suffering and Spiritual Service in the Works of James Baldwin." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2006. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/6 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RECLAIMING THE HUMAN SELF: REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING AND SPIRITUAL SERVICE IN THE WORKS OF JAMES BALDWIN by FRANCINE LARUE ALLEN Under the Direction of Professor Thomas McHaney ABSTRACT James Arthur Baldwin argues that the issue of humanity—what it means to be human and whether or not all people bear the same measure of human worth—supersedes all issues, including socially popular ones such as race and religion. As a former child preacher, Baldwin claims, like others shaped by both the African-American faith tradition and Judeo- Christianity, that human equality stands as a divinely mandated and philosophically sound concept. As a literary artist and social commentator, Baldwin argues that truth in any narrative text, whether fictional or non-fictional, lies in its embrace or rejection of human equality. Truth-telling narrative texts uphold human equality; false-witnessing texts do not. Baldwin shows in four of his novels the prevalence of the latter narrative type. Within the fictional societies of Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Giovanni’s Room (1956), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), and Just Above My Head (1979), Baldwin reveals how society’s powerful bear false witness against the marginalized through stereotyping social narratives. However, Baldwin uses his novels to show the humanity of the marginalized. In so doing, he connects his works, as well as the works of contemporary black literary artists, to the concept of Christian spirituality. INDEX WORDS: Humanness, Discourse, Faith, Prophet, Bible, Religion, Redemption, Modern African American writers, Apocalypse, Social Narratives RECLAIMING THE HUMAN SELF: REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING AND SPIRITUAL SERVICE IN THE WORKS OF JAMES BALDWIN by FRANCINE LARUE ALLEN A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2005 Copyright by Francine LaRue Allen 2005 Reclaiming the Human Self: Redemptive Suffering and Spiritual Service in the Works of James Baldwin by FRANCINE LARUE ALLEN Major Professor: Thomas McHaney Committee Mary Zeigler Warren Carson Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University December 2005 iv Dedications This work is dedicated to my father and mother, Robert and Frances Allen Mayo, who have always been my very best friends, my greatest supporters, and my faithful counselors. I wish also to dedicate this work to the memory of William Allen, D.V.M. v Acknowledgments I would like to thank my dissertation director Dr. Thomas McHaney for his incisive reading. Thanks go also to Dr. Mary Zeigler and Dr. Warren Carson who blended encouragement with their critical reading of my work. Finally, my greatest thanks goes to God for the comfort of His divine presence. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgements . v Introduction . 1 A. Review of Literature . 1 B. Dissertation Focus . 11 C. Overview of Chapters .. 16 Chapter I No Longer an Outsider: The Biblical Underpinnings of James Baldwin’s Call for Human Equality . 20 A. The Scriptural Worldview Embraced by the Black Faith Community and Baldwin . 20 B. Human Equality as Viewed by the Black Faith Community and 25 Baldwin C. The Proclamation of Human Equality through Truthful Discourse .. 34 Chapter II Just Telling the Truth: The Battle between False-Witnessing Narratives and Truth-Telling Narratives in James Baldwin’s Fiction . 39 A. Humanness as an Issue for Exploration in Narratives . 40 B. Fundamental Beliefs about Humanness Revealed in Narrative Order . 41 C. The Prophetic, Truth-Telling Mission of Baldwin’s Fiction . 45 vii Chapter III Beauty from Ashes: Redemptive Suffering in James Baldwin’s Fiction . 62 A. Suffering Characters in Baldwin’s Novels. 63 B. Redemptive Suffering in the African-American Faith Tradition . 68 C. The Suffering that Saves Baldwin’s Characters . 73 D. The Suffering that Destroys Baldwin’s Characters . 87 Chapter IV James Baldwin’s Call to Service: Christian Spirituality in African-American Literature . 97 A. The Gradual Separation between Black Literary Works and Christianity . 98 B. Multiple Religious Choices within Black Culture . 101 C. The Emphasis upon Spirituality instead of Christianity . 103 D. Traditional Views of Spirituality Grounded in Service 106 E. Baldwin’s Attempt to Disconnect Traditional Spirituality from Faith 127 F. Traditional Spirituality Identified in Modern Works of Black Writers 131 Conclusion . 135 Review of Chapters . 136 James Baldwin’s Apocalyptic Vision . 138 Endnotes . 144 Works Cited . 147 1 Introduction Review of the Literature James Arthur Baldwin, born August 2, 1924, in New York City, joined the Fireside Pentecostal Assembly church in 1937 and became, at the age of 14, a boy preacher. At the time, according to biographer James Campbell, Baldwin “knew the Bible so well that he coloured his phrases with Old Testament rhetoric and poetry, with full conviction” (10). However, by the time Baldwin was 17, he had decided to leave the pulpit, unhappy about what he saw as the lack of love within the church and desiring to become a novelist and playwright, believing, Campbell says, that “the sacred . was not the only domain to scrutinize in search of ‘everlasting life’” and that “the Holy Ghost might be identified here on earth, among human beings, in works of art” (21-22). After graduating from high school and working several menial jobs, he began writing book reviews and essays for various publications while also trying to develop his fiction- writing skills. In 1948, frustrated with America’s racial problems, he left for Paris, eventually seeing the publication of his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, in 1953 while there. He returned to America in 1957, engaging himself in the civil rights movement and becoming a lecturer at various universities. He eventually returned to France, dying there on December 1, 1987. His faith, his artistry, his social and political concerns—all serve as the diverse subject matter of his fiction and nonfiction. This diversity has given critics great flexibility when choosing issues to focus upon when examining his writings. 2 Baldwin’s Faith In the 1980s and 1990s, critics Sondra A. O’Neale and Michael Lynch investigated Baldwin’s complex relationship with Christianity. O’Neale focused primarily on Baldwin’s faith while Lynch connected Baldwin’s faith to his political concerns, a connection that Donald B. Gibson made twenty years earlier in his description of Baldwin as a moralist. In “Fathers, Gods, and Religion” Sondra A. O’Neale argues that Baldwin’s works speak of Christianity in non-traditional ways, questioning God’s working in the world and pointing out error in the traditional black church, an institution that so many African- American writers before him had highly regarded. According to O’Neale, Baldwin frequently observed the disconnect between the Christian believer’s profession of faith and the believer’s demonstration of that faith. In trying to understand God, Baldwin questioned why God allowed so many troubles to befall the black race despite its consistently demonstrated faith in Him. O’Neale says that Baldwin’s observations and questionings served as evidence of his belief in God and his attempt to discover God’s identity and His relationships to black people: On the surface one cannot ascertain whether or not Baldwin is a ‘religious writer’ because his works do not reflect the traditional treatment of Christianity in black American literature. Instead, Baldwin examines the enigmas of human affections absent in Christian professors; the failure of the Christian God to thwart the persistent onslaught of His African children; and the insistence of those children to forge a ‘normal’ dependent interaction with that God. These witnesses are empirical evidence of God in Baldwin’s world, 3 and he exploits them to excess so that he can mold a composite God, discover His personality, and fathom His intentions toward black people (1988, 126). According to O’Neale, Baldwin greatly changed African-American literature, not only as the last black writer in America to present a thorough discussion about African-Americans and their relationship with Christianity, but also as one writer, among others within the black literary establishment, who did not exalt the black church. Baldwin’s unwillingness to present the black church as an ideal entity was different, however, from the unwillingness of other black writers. Writers such as Nella Larsen in Quicksand (1928) and Richard Wright in Black Boy (1945) rejected Christian faith while criticizing Christian hypocrisy. Baldwin, on the other hand, continued to value many teachings of the faith even as he admonished the Church for its hypocrisy. O’Neale suggests that Baldwin’s primary concern with Christian philosophy, outside of its employment for hypocritical purposes, was its strict guidelines concerning sexual normalcy. In works such as Giovanni’s Room and Just Above My Head, he shows homosexuality to be “an acceptable form of human love” (1988,140). O’Neale says that because of Baldwin’s efforts to point out hypocrisy in the black church and to make homosexuality acceptable, he “opened the floodgate for contemporary anti-Christian, non- biblically based black American literature” (1988, 140).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Perched in Potential: Mobility, Liminality, and Blues Aesthetics
    PERCHED IN POTENTIAL: MOBILITY, LIMINALITY, AND BLUES AESTHETICS IN THE WRITINGS OF JAMES BALDWIN by TAREVA LESELLE JOHNSON (Under the Direction of Valerie Babb) ABSTRACT James Baldwin’s mobility and appreciation for African American musical traditions play an integral part in the writer’s crossing of genre and subgenre, his unique style, and his preoccupation with repeated themes. The interplay of music and shifting space in Baldwin’s life and texts create liminal spaces for Baldwin and readers to enter. In these spaces, clearer understandings of the importance of exteriority and interiority, simultaneously, are achieved. This in-betweenness is a place of potential and power. Baldwin’s writing uses this power to chronicle his own growing consciousness and to create, with his collective works, and through them, Baldwininan literary theory that applies to his own works’ use of liminality, the blues and travel. One is able to overhear Baldwin speaking to himself via his texts at multiple points in his nearly forty-year career. INDEX WORDS: James Baldwin, Transatlantic, Liminal, Mobility, Blues, African American, Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Amen Corner, Sonny’s Blues, The Uses of the Blues, Paris, Turkey, Exile PERCHED IN POTENTIAL: MOBILITY, LIMINALITY, AND BLUES AESTHETICS IN THE WRITINGS OF JAMES BALDWIN by TAREVA LESELLE JOHNSON B.A., COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 2008 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS ATHENS, GEORGIA 2012 © 2012 Tareva Leselle Johnson All Rights Reserved PERCHED IN POTENTIAL: MOBILITY, LIMINALITY, AND BLUES AESTHETICS IN THE WRITINGS OF JAMES BALDWIN by TAREVA LESELLE JOHNSON Major Professor: Valerie Babb Committee: Cody Marrs Barbara McCaskill Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2012 iv DEDICATION I dedicate this project to my brother, Jerome, and everyone else who makes their way back time and time again.
    [Show full text]
  • Equal in Paris
    EQUAL IN PARIS An Autobiographical Story JAMES BALDWIN O N THE 19th of December, in 1949, head was chilling and abrupt, like the down- when I had been living in Paris beat of an axe-the hotel would certainly for a little over a year, I was ar- have gone bankrupt long before. It was said rested as a receiver of stolen goods and spent that this old man had not gone farther than eight days in prison. My arrest came about the door of his hotel for thirty years, which through an American tourist whom I had was not at all difficult to believe. He looked met twice in New York, who had been given as though the daylight would have killed my name and address and told to look me him. up. I was then living on the top floor of a I did not, of course, spend much of my ludicrously grim hotel on the rue du Bac, one time in this palace. The moment I began of those enormous dark, cold, and hideous living in French hotels I understood the establishments in which Paris abounds that necessity of French caf6s. This made it seem to breathe forth, in their airless, humid, rather difficult to look me up, for as soon stone-cold halls, the weak light, scurrying as I was out of bed I hopefully took notebook chambermaids, and creaking stairs, an odor and fountain pen off to the upstairs room of gentility long long dead. The place was of the Flore, where I consumed rather a lot run by an ancient Frenchman dressed in an of coffee and, as evening approached, rather elegant black suit which was green with age, a lot of alcohol, but did not get much writing who cannot properly be described as be- done.
    [Show full text]
  • Homosexuality in James Baldwin's Novels
    RESEARCH PAPER English Volume : 5 | Issue : 9 | September 2015 | ISSN - 2249-555X Homosexuality in James Baldwin’s Novels KEYWORDS Homosexual, James Baldwin, African American gay writers, Racism, Religious. Ibrahim Mohammed Ali Alfagih Dr. A Y.Badgujar Research Guide Arts, Commerce &Science College PhD. Student,English Department, NMU (Varangaon) ABSTRACT James Baldwin was African American novelist and social critic. He was born illegitimate and black boy. But he became a well- known writer in bisexual and queer in African American literature writing with his novels. Baldwin’s acclaimed novels are Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Another Country, Tell Me How Long the Train Been Gone, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Just Above My Head. This paper tries to show how homosexual is used in James Baldwin’s novels. James Baldwin carefully studied and dis- guised the homosexual theme in the first novel through John who was searching for his existence or identity, While, in Giovanni’s Room, homosexual was fully undisguised. The success of Giovanni’s Room as a gay and white novel made Baldwin to choose homosexual as main theme in his later novels. So, Baldwin opened the door in front of the next generation of gay writers to study and discus gay theme in their works. James Baldwin had difficulties in his childhood life. He did It portrays the efforts and life of John Grimes. It comes to not know his biological father. He had complex and tough terms with John African American cultural inheritance and relationship with his step-father. His father showed a strict his homosexuality.
    [Show full text]
  • Negotiating Black Nationalism and Queerness in James Baldwin's Late Novels
    University of Mississippi eGrove Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2013 The Song We Sing: Negotiating Black Nationalism And Queerness In James Baldwin's Late Novels Elliot N. Long University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons Recommended Citation Long, Elliot N., "The Song We Sing: Negotiating Black Nationalism And Queerness In James Baldwin's Late Novels" (2013). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 547. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/547 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “THE SONG WE SING”: NEGOTIATING BLACK NATIONALISM AND QUEERNESS IN JAMES BALDWIN’S LATE NOVELS A Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English The University of Mississippi by ELLIOT N. LONG June 2013 Copyright Elliot N. Long 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT Despite his exclusion from the Black Arts Movement, James Baldwin includes in his later novels many elements of Black Nationalism, including a focus on black communities, black music, Pan-Africanism, and elements of separatism. In his inclusion of queer sexuality, Baldwin pushes against the typical bounds of Black Arts writings, expanding the limits of the genre. Contrary to the philosophy of Black Nationalism, which depends upon solid definitions of blackness, heterosexuality, and masculinity, is Baldwin’s tearing down of identity categories through queering sexuality, gender, and race.
    [Show full text]
  • James Baldwin, the Religious Right, and the Moral Minority
    ESSAY “To Crush the Serpent”: James Baldwin, the Religious Right, and the Moral Minority Joseph Vogel Merrimack College Abstract In the 1980s, James Baldwin recognized that a major transformation had occurred in the socio- political functions of religion. His critique adapted accordingly, focus- ing on the ways in which religion—particularly white evangelical Christianity— had morphed into a movement deeply enmeshed with mass media, conservative politics, and late capitalism. Religion in the Reagan era was leveraged, sold, and consumed in ways never before seen, from charismatic televangelists, to Christian- themed amusement parks, to mega- churches. The new movement was often char- acterized as the “religious right” or the “Moral Majority” and was central to both Reagan’s political coalition as well as the broader culture wars. For Baldwin, this development had wide- ranging ramifications for society and the individual. This article draws on Baldwin’s final major essay, “To Crush the Serpent” (1987), to examine the author’s evolving thoughts on religion, salvation, and transgression in the context of the Reagan era. Keywords: James Baldwin, religion, Moral Majority, religious right, Ronald Reagan, “To Crush the Serpent,” 1980s At some point in the 1980s, James Baldwin must have been flipping through chan- nels on TV and stumbled upon an appearance of Jerry Falwell on Nightline, or perhaps Pat Robertson’s talk show, The 700 Club, or maybe Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Praise the Lord (PTL) network. These figures were so ubiquitous during the Reagan era it would have been difficult not to. While we may never know the full range of thoughts looming behind those large, inquisitive eyes, Baldwin, fortunately, did leave behind a written record on the subject that offers important insights into the author’s evolving thoughts on religion, salvation, and transgres- sion from the final decade of his life.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading and Theorizing James Baldwin: a Bibliographic Essay
    BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY Reading and Theorizing James Baldwin: A Bibliographic Essay Conseula Francis College of Charleston, South Carolina Abstract Readers and critics alike, for the past sixty years, generally agree that Baldwin is a major African-American writer. What they do not agree on is why. Because of his artistic and intellectual complexity, Baldwin’s work resists easy categori- zation and Baldwin scholarship, consequently, spans the critical horizon. This essay provides an overview of the three major periods of Baldwin scholarship. 1963–73 is a period that begins with the publication of The Fire Next Time and sees Baldwin grace the cover of Time magazine. This period ends with Time declaring Baldwin too passé to publish an interview with him and with critics questioning his relevance. The second period, 1974–87, finds critics attempting to rehabilitate Baldwin’s reputation and work, especially as scholars begin to codify the African-American literary canon in anthologies and American universities. Finally, scholarship in the period after Baldwin’s death takes the opportunity to challenge common assumptions and silences surrounding Baldwin’s work. Armed with the methodologies of cultural studies and the critical insights of queer theory, critics set the stage for the current Baldwin renaissance. Keywords: James Baldwin, critical reception, literary history, literary criticism, African-American literature Considering the critical reception of James Baldwin is difficult for a number of reasons. First, Baldwin was a widely reviewed, widely studied, prolific author. He published twenty-two full-length works in his lifetime, in addition to many essays, reviews, introductions, and interviews. In addition, his career was quite long.
    [Show full text]
  • Sonny's Blues Study Guide
    Sonny's Blues Study Guide © 2018 eNotes.com, Inc. or its Licensors. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information storage retrieval systems without the written permission of the publisher. Summary The narrator, a teacher in Harlem, has escaped the ghetto, creating a stable and secure life for himself despite the destructive pressures that he sees destroying so many young blacks. He sees African American adolescents discovering the limits placed on them by a racist society at the very moment when they are discovering their abilities. He tells the story of his relationship with his younger brother, Sonny. That relationship has moved through phases of separation and return. After their parents’ deaths, he tried and failed to be a father to Sonny. For a while, he believed that Sonny had succumbed to the destructive influences of Harlem life. Finally, however, they achieved a reconciliation in which the narrator came to understand the value and the importance of Sonny’s need to be a jazz pianist. The story opens with a crisis in their relationship. The narrator reads in the newspaper that Sonny was taken into custody in a drug raid. He learns that Sonny is addicted to heroin and that he will be sent to a treatment facility to be “cured.” Unable to believe that his gentle and quiet brother could have so abused himself, the narrator cannot reopen communication with Sonny until a second crisis occurs, the death of his daughter from polio.
    [Show full text]
  • ITL Frontmatter
    thein A BLACK GAY ANTHOLOGY thein A BLACK GAY ANTHOLOGY edited by Joseph Beam New Introduction by James Earl Hardy WASHINGTON, DC www.redbonepress.com In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology Copyright © 1986 by Joseph Beam; © 2008 by Estate of Joseph Beam New Introduction, “And We Continue to Go the Way Our Blood Beats...” copyright © 2008 by James Earl Hardy Individual selections copyright © by their respective author(s) Published by: RedBone Press P.O. Box 15571 Washington, DC 20003 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of reviews. 08 09 10 11 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Second edition Cover design by Eunice Corbin Logo design by Mignon Goode Joseph Beam cover photo copyright © 1985 by Sharon Farmer Permissions acknowledgments appear on pp. 219. Artwork on p. 1 by Deryl Mackie; photograph on p. 23 by Joseph Beam; artwork on p. 45 by Don Reid; artwork on p. 69 by Vega; artwork on p. 115 by Tawa; photograph on p. 173 by Joseph Beam. Printed in the United States of America ISBN-13: 978-0-9786251-2-2 ISBN-10: 0-9786251-2-9 www.redbonepress.com for my parents, Dorothy and Sun F. Beam for loving for Kenyatta Ombaka Baki for believing for Addie and Charles for our future Contents And We Continue to Go the Way Our Blood Beats..., by James Earl Hardy / ix Acknowledgments / xv Introduction / xix Coming of Age, Brad Johnson / xxv Stepping Out The Boy with Beer, Melvin Dixon / 2 With My Head Held Up High, Gilberto Gerald / 14 Cut Off from Among Their People On Not Being White, Reginald Shepherd / 24 Beautiful Blackman, Blackberri / 35 Don’t Turn Your Back on Me, Stephan Lee Dais / 37 Cut Off from Among Their People, Craig G.
    [Show full text]
  • Staging Civil Rights: African American Literature, Performance, and Innovation
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2014 Staging Civil Rights: African American Literature, Performance, and innovation Julius B. Fleming Jr University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the African American Studies Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, and the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Fleming Jr, Julius B., "Staging Civil Rights: African American Literature, Performance, and innovation" (2014). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1276. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1276 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1276 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Staging Civil Rights: African American Literature, Performance, and innovation Abstract This dissertation examines the relationship between African American literature and performance during the modern Civil Rights Movement. It traces the ways in which the movement was acted out on the theatrical stage as creatively as it was at those sites of embodied activism that have survived in intellectual and popular memories: lunch counters and buses, schools and courtrooms, streets and prisons. Whereas television and photography have served as primary ways of knowing the movement, this project turns to African American literature, and the live performances it inspired, to provide a more complex framework for analyzing the
    [Show full text]
  • American Studies
    REQUIRED GE COURSE ATTRIBUTES Firstly, we believe that assignments should measure student growth from the beginning to the end of the courses we teach. Secondly, we understand that students learn differently. Therefore, we have designed a course with a variety of assignments, from papers to group presentations. Finally, we have designed the class so that students learn as much from each other as they do from their instructor. We believe that the three assignments outlined below fulfill our objectives. In AMST 2025, students turn in a brief “diversity autobiography” in the second week of the course. Prior class meetings demonstrate how to blend census data and their own life experiences to reflect on how their geographic and temporal context has shaped their experience of diversity. Integrating diverse sources of evidence into a coherent argument is a principle objective of the assignments throughout the course. The diversity autobiography is then reprised at the end of the semester. In the second installment, students write a longer essay and integrate a wider variety of source material from the class itself to analyze their experience of diversity at the University of Iowa. Reading quizzes begin immediately, in the second week of the course. By week 5, small groups of students (typically between 4 and 5) assume primary responsibility for writing the quiz questions and initiating discussion of the related assigned readings for the day. Prior to each group’s leadership day, the instructor meets with each group outside of class. At this point the instructor evaluates the quiz question and plans the class meeting.
    [Show full text]
  • James Baldwin: a Voice in the Wilderness Jennifer Jordan
    New Directions Volume 15 | Issue 2 Article 5 4-1-1988 James Baldwin: A Voice in the Wilderness Jennifer Jordan Follow this and additional works at: http://dh.howard.edu/newdirections Recommended Citation Jordan, Jennifer (1988) "James Baldwin: A Voice in the Wilderness," New Directions: Vol. 15: Iss. 2, Article 5. Available at: http://dh.howard.edu/newdirections/vol15/iss2/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Howard @ Howard University. It has been accepted for inclusion in New Directions by an authorized administrator of Digital Howard @ Howard University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE ARTS insuperable universe, the psychotic Negro shoving white girls into furnaces. Realism avoids hyperbole and instead examines the typical with an intimate particularity. Characters exist in a specific social framework, a particular time and Jam es place that can both destroy and nurture. They are surrounded by other people Baldwin whose relationships with them are clear. Sometimes these characters perform hero­ ically, but generally they are not larger than A Voice in life. The object of realism is to make them the same size as life, a job which demands 28 The Wilderness above all balance and a realization that, although people can be as wretched as By Jennifer Jordan Bigger Thomas in Wright’s Native Son and as magical as Pilate in Toni Morrison’s Song t is written that a prophet has no honor of Solomon, they usually fall somewhere in in his own country. In America this between. maxim applies only to living prophets.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Giovanni's Room' Revisited
    The New York Times Style Magazine ‘Giovanni’s Room’ Revisited James Baldwin’s 1956 novel is a layered exploration of queer desire — and of the writer’s own sense of self. By Hilton Als Published Sept. 5, 2019 Updated Sept. 6, 2019 Nobody wanted it. Certainly not the folks at Alfred A. Knopf, who published his first novel, “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” in 1953. Back then, the young James Baldwin — he was just 28 when “Mountain” came out — had a protector named William Cole, who was Knopf’s publicity director. Always on the lookout for fresh voices, the publicist read magazines like The New Leader, Commentary and The Nation, where, a few years earlier, essays and reviews by a man named James Baldwin had begun to appear with some frequency. And what Cole found in the emotionally charged writing were thoughts that sometimes — thrillingly — strained against its own gorgeous, literary, knowing style: Baldwin “read,” but from up high. Cole brought a few of his pieces to Knopf’s editor in chief, Harold Strauss, who contacted Baldwin’s agent and learned that he was at work on a novel. When Knopf eventually received the manuscript for “Mountain,” it appeared that its peripatetic author — who had lived abroad, mostly in Paris, since 1948 — had typed the story out on all sorts of typewriters and on many different kinds of stationery. No matter. What held the book together was Baldwin’s extraordinary sensibility, and his deep understanding of his 14-year-old protagonist, John, who feels — who knows — life might be something else if prejudice and poverty and his hateful and hated father, a part-time Pentecostal preacher named Gabriel, didn’t threaten to follow him all the days of his life and beat him out of heaven when he got there.
    [Show full text]