University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository English Faculty Publications English 1978 James Baldwin Daryl Cumber Dance University of Richmond,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/english-faculty-publications Part of the African American Studies Commons, Caribbean Languages and Societies Commons, and the Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons Recommended Citation Dance, Daryl Cumber. "James Baldwin." In Black American Writers: Bibliographical Essays, edited by M. Thomas Inge, Maurice Duke, and Jackson R. Bryer, 73-120. Vol. 2. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978. This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the English at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. JAMES BALDWIN DARYL DANCE James Baldwin is one of America's best known and most controversial writers. If there is some figurative truth in his declarations "Nobody Knows My Name" and "No Name in the Street," on a realistic level practically everyone knows his name, from people on the street to scholars in the most prestigious universities-and they all respond to him. Those responses are as diverse and as antithetical as the respon dents. Indeed, there is little unanimity in the criticism of James Bald win: some view him as a prophet preaching love and salvation, others as a soothsayer forecasting death and destruction; some see him as a civil-rights advocate writing protest literature, others as an artist imagi natively portraying the plight of the black American or the alienated man.