The Legacy and Importance of James Baldwin

 

Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own 

by Eddie S Glaude Jr.

James Baldwin Allan warren, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons 

This was a fascinating and different type of book. It straddled a few different genres—As Glaude describes the book, it’s like a literary biography; however, in tracing the trajectory of Baldwin’s writing, it’s much more than a literary biography. It also traces Baldwin’s development as one of the most important social critics, one of the most important writers of the 20th century to bring an honest and confrontational eye to issues of race and inequality that some other writers and social critics may not have. What’s even more fascinating to learn from this book is how many different worlds—social, entertainment, political, literary, art—that Baldwin inhabited and worked with. I did not realize how influential Baldwin was in so many different worlds. In some ways, it was sad to see how younger generations treated Baldwin. Glaude notes that some writers in the Black Arts movement like Eldridge Cleaver were troubled by Baldwin’s sexuality. However, Baldwin always seemed to notice how important the younger Black leaders were, whether it was Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, or Angela Davis. 

While tracing Baldwin’s life and career development was interesting, Glaude frames these facts and details as relevant to today, as the title suggests. Whether discussing the re-emergence of white nationalism over the last decade, police brutality and the murder of Black people, or the general inequality in the world today, Glaude highlights and analyzes aspects of Baldwin’s life and writings that discussed similar issues from the 1960s throughout the 1980s before Baldwin’s death. 

I didn’t read much of Baldwin until after college. The one book I did read, The Devil Finds Work, always fascinated me. I read it for a film class, and it was so different from the other texts we read for that course or many of the other texts I read in my African American literature courses. Although it’s not always treated as one of Baldwin’s major works, I think it reflects the kind of work that Glaude analyzes throughout his book. It talks about Baldwin’s formative experiences, especially in regard to reading and films, and how he struggled to identify with many of the white characters he encountered, noting there were not always many Black characters. As a result, Baldwin seemed to will these kinds of characters who reflected who he was and wanted to see—whether arguing, creating, analyzing, deconstructing--- Baldwin did so much to challenge the roles for African Americans in films, literature and society, pushing for greater inclusion. Glaude also stresses how integral Baldwin was and still is in confronting the current issues we face.