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Writers may outlive their times, but only if they pour the truest and most fiery parts of themselves into their books. James Baldwin, born in New York on August 2 1924, would have turned 100 this year, and his books — from the novels Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) and Another Country (1962) to his collected essays — continue to spark rebellion, hope and fortitude around the world.
Baldwin grew up in Harlem, the eldest in a family of nine children, and later wrote that New York’s public libraries offered a lifeline from the constant struggle with poverty. Through more than 20 books, including many unforgettable novels, essays and plays, he became a “witness to whence I came, where I am”, exploring homosexuality despite the prejudices of those times and charting the structures of racism. Baldwin, whose own grandfather had been enslaved, was a powerful and searing voice in the civil rights movement. In Notes of a Native Son, his 1955 essay collection, you hear that voice in his fierce criticisms of entrenched bigotry, but also his firm claim: “I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.”
Almost 40 years have passed since Baldwin’s death at the age of 63 at his home in Saint-Paul de Vence, France, in December 1987. It is a small measure of how cherished he was that the friends who gave eulogies at his memorial service included Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou, three of America’s greatest writers. “The season was always Christmas with you there,” Morrison said in tribute, thanking her departed friend for the “three gifts” he gave her — language, courage and tenderness.
Baldwin’s influence has only grown stronger in the intervening years. His books remain powerful, timeless and sometimes prescient, passed around between students, and celebrated by contemporary writers from Jesmyn Ward to Arundhati Roy, Teju Cole to Colm Tóibín.
As his centenary approaches, the literary world is marking the occasion with celebrations large and small. The New York Public Library is giving away 4,000 free copies of Baldwin’s books at its branches this July; theatres in the US, Europe and the UK have held readings and plays in his honour. And Grammy winning singer and poet Meshell Ndegeocello is releasing an album of songs inspired by Baldwin, No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin, that she’s worked on for eight years.
I have a soft spot for the projects that honour Baldwin’s voice — clear and memorable, like a struck bell — that was honed, at least in part, during his teenage years as an evangelist preacher. Last week I went to a reading of Baldwin’s poetry in New Delhi’s Nehru Park, hosted by a local group of fans, who read from Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems, translating lines into Hindi and Urdu on the fly. “Lord,/ when you send the rain,/ think about it, please,/ a little?” they recited from one of his untitled poems. On cue, the grey clouds overhead opened up, sending us scuttling for shelter under a bridge, where we continued to read from a shared copy, passing Baldwin’s words from hand to hand.
Baldwin left America for Paris in 1948 — with just over $40 and nothing in the bank — convinced that he could no longer live in the country as a Black, gay writer. But it was in Europe, looking back at the US, that he began to understand his homeland, to grasp — far earlier than most thinkers — that “the West, the entire West, is changing, is breaking up”. The years of exile brought him to a place of resolution: “I began to see this country [America] for the first time,” he said in a 1961 interview. “If I hadn’t gone away, I would never have been able to see it; and if I was unable to see it, I would never have been able to forgive it. I’m not mad at this country anymore; I am very worried about it.”
In a 1964 interview, he spelt out his vision for America: “I envisage a world which is almost impossible to imagine in this country. A world in which race would count for nothing.” In India, Baldwin’s writings on race have also illuminated the workings of the caste system for many of us. During discussions at our small gathering, students took up his words, trying to imagine a future for India where Indians were no longer separated from one another by caste and religion.
This year — one in which segregation and bigotry continue to be raging issues in democracies such as India and America — Baldwin has become a touchstone for me. I have revisited his essays and his novels but it’s the poetry that holds me these days. Baldwin seldom offered false hope, but his words in poems such as “For Nothing is Fixed” are a beautiful, powerful reminder that the only way forward is through standing alongside one another: “The moment we cease to hold each other,/ the moment we break faith with one another,/ the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”
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