Baldwin's Harlem: A Biography of James BaldwinBaldwin's Harlem is an intimate portrait of the life and genius of one of our most brilliant literary minds: James Baldwin. Perhaps no other writer is as synonymous with Harlem as James Baldwin (1924-1987). The events there that shaped his youth greatly influenced Baldwin's work, much of which focused on his experiences as a black man in white America. Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Fire Next Time, Notes of a Native Son, and Giovanni's Room are just a few of his classic fiction and nonfiction books that remain an essential part of the American canon. In Baldwin's Harlem, award-winning journalist Herb Boyd combines impeccable biographical research with astute literary criticism, and reveals to readers Baldwin's association with Harlem on both metaphorical and realistic levels. For example, Boyd describes Baldwin's relationship with Harlem Renaissance poet laureate Countee Cullen, who taught Baldwin French in the ninth grade. Packed with telling anecdotes, Baldwin's Harlem illuminates the writer's diverse views and impressions of the community that would remain a consistent presence in virtually all of his writing. Baldwin's Harlem provides an intelligent and enlightening look at one of America's most important literary enclaves. |
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Page v
A Biography of James Baldwin Herb Boyd. TO : ELZA , THE KATHERINES , AND THE BALDWINS CONTENTS Foreword by Peniel E. Joseph Preface 1 : Born.
A Biography of James Baldwin Herb Boyd. TO : ELZA , THE KATHERINES , AND THE BALDWINS CONTENTS Foreword by Peniel E. Joseph Preface 1 : Born.
Page vii
... Born in Harlem 2 : Encountering Countee Cullen 3 : Langston Hughes 4 : Sanctuary 5 : Death in Harlem ix XV 1 스굿 23 33 47 2 3 4 5 55 6 : Malcolm X 65 7 : The Harlem Six 87 8 : The Jewish Question 103 9 : Harlem , Real and Imagined 125 ...
... Born in Harlem 2 : Encountering Countee Cullen 3 : Langston Hughes 4 : Sanctuary 5 : Death in Harlem ix XV 1 스굿 23 33 47 2 3 4 5 55 6 : Malcolm X 65 7 : The Harlem Six 87 8 : The Jewish Question 103 9 : Harlem , Real and Imagined 125 ...
Page xxvii
... - liant arc across our intellectual firmament , and so long as we find a way to keep his genius alive and burning there will be a light leading us home , home to Baldwin's Harlem . Chapter 1 BORN IN HARLEM was born in Harlem , PREFACE ...
... - liant arc across our intellectual firmament , and so long as we find a way to keep his genius alive and burning there will be a light leading us home , home to Baldwin's Harlem . Chapter 1 BORN IN HARLEM was born in Harlem , PREFACE ...
Page 1
A Biography of James Baldwin Herb Boyd. Chapter 1 BORN IN HARLEM was born in Harlem , " James Arthur Baldwin Ideclared at the beginning of Notes of a Native Son , his first published collection of nonfiction . And he described this ...
A Biography of James Baldwin Herb Boyd. Chapter 1 BORN IN HARLEM was born in Harlem , " James Arthur Baldwin Ideclared at the beginning of Notes of a Native Son , his first published collection of nonfiction . And he described this ...
Page 2
... born on August 2 , 1924 , in Harlem Hospital . The hospital , which had been founded in 1887 in a brownstone on 120th Street and the East River , was greatly expanded once it was relocated in 1911 to Lenox Avenue between 135th and 137th ...
... born on August 2 , 1924 , in Harlem Hospital . The hospital , which had been founded in 1887 in a brownstone on 120th Street and the East River , was greatly expanded once it was relocated in 1911 to Lenox Avenue between 135th and 137th ...
Contents
| 1 | |
Malcolm X | 65 |
The Harlem | 87 |
The Jewish Question | 103 |
Harlem Real and Imagined | 125 |
Cruses Crisis | 149 |
Baraka | 169 |
Afterword | 179 |
Acknowledgments | 185 |
Credits and Permissions | 209 |
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activists Amiri Baraka anti-Semitic artist autobiography Ayer Baldwin wrote biography black Americans blacks and Jews brother Capouya church Countee Cullen cultural David Leeming Davis DeWitt Clinton discussion Douglass Eckman Ellison essay father fiction Fire friends Furious Passage Gates George Go Tell Harlem Ghetto Harlem Renaissance Harlem Six Harlemites Harold Cruse Henry Herb high school Hughes's interview James Baldwin James Baldwin Estate Jewish Jews Jimmy John Henrik Clarke Kennedy knew Langston Hughes later leaders letter literary lived in Harlem Lorraine Hansberry loved Lynn magazine Mailer Malcolm Malcolm X Mead ment Michael Nation Native Negro Intellectual never noted novel Ossie Davis Paris Paul Robeson play poem police political Press published Quincy Troupe racial recalled Review Richard Wright riot Schomburg Center story Street Sugar Hill talk theater things Ticket tion W.E.B. Du Bois Weatherby white liberals writer York City young
Popular passages
Page 103 - My best friend in high school was a Jew. He came to our house once, and afterward my father asked, as he asked about everyone, "Is he a Christian?" — by which he meant "Is he saved?" I really do not know whether my answer came out of innocence or venom, but I said coldly, "No. He's Jewish." My father slammed me across the face with his great palm, and in that moment everything flooded back — all the hatred and all the fear, and the depth of a merciless resolve to kill my father rather than allow...
Page 168 - We are unfair And unfair We are black magicians Black arts we make in black labs of the heart The fair are fair and deathly white The day will not save them And we own the night There is also a section of the poem "Black Dada Nihilismus
Page 5 - IT is ONLY in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story. It is a story which otherwise has yet to be told and which no American is prepared to hear.
Page 67 - Malcolm tells them — what Malcolm tells them, in effect, is that they should be proud of being black, and God knows that they should be. That is a very important thing to hear in a country which assures you that you should be ashamed of it. Of course, in order to do this, what he does is destroy a truth and invent a history. What he does is say, "You're better because you're black.
Page 21 - ... plain the reason tortured Tantalus Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair. Inscrutable His ways are, and immune To catechism by a mind too strewn With petty cares to slightly understand What awful brain compels His awful hand. Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
Page 135 - I swear that New York must be the ugliest and the dirtiest city in the world. It must have the ugliest buildings and the nastiest people. It's got to have the worst cops. If any place is worse, it's got to be so close to hell that you can smell the people frying. And, come to think of it, that's exactly the smell of New York in the summertime.
Page 33 - Hughes is an American Negro poet and has no choice but to be acutely aware of it. He is not the first American Negro to find the war between his social and artistic responsibilities all but irreconcilable.
Page 35 - The projects in Harlem are hated. They are hated almost as much as policemen, and this is saying a great deal. And they are hated for the same reason: both reveal, unbearably, the real attitude of the white world, no matter how many liberal speeches are made, no matter how many lofty editorials are written, no matter how many civil-rights commissions are set up.
Page xxviii - In those days my mother was given to the exasperating and mysterious habit of having babies. As they were born, I took them over with one hand and held a book with the other. The children probably suffered, though they have since been kind enough to deny it, and in this way I read Uncle Tom's Cabin and A Tale of Two Cities over and over and over again...