Bibliograph

Type

Label

James Baldwin, a biography, David Leeming

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (pages 389-417) and index

resource.biographical

individual biography

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

James Baldwin

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

28631289

Responsibility statement

David Leeming

Sub title

a biography

Summary

"He was one of the twentieth century's most extraordinary men of letters. Angry, provocative, courageous, James Baldwin wrote with such fierce eloquence about issues of race and sex that his great books - Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni's Room, Another Country, The Fire Next Time - are now part of the canon of American literature. The literary scholar David Leeming, a friend of Baldwin's for twenty-five years, brings us closer than we have ever been to the complex, troubled, brilliant man who struggled out of Harlem to create a series of works that expose the essential racism of America, and indeed the world. Leeming explores every aspect of Baldwin's life - his relationships with the famous and the unknown, his homosexuality and precarious style of life, his expatriate years in France and Turkey, his gift for compassion and love, the public pressures that overwhelmed his quest for fulfillment and happiness, and above all his inspired and passionate battle against the white society's blindness to black identity. "I've been here three hundred and fifty years," he would tell a white audience, "but you've never seen me." James Baldwin died in 1987 in France at the age of sixty-three. He lives vividly in the pages of David Leeming's powerful biography"--Jacket

Table Of Contents

The Harlem life -- Bill Miller -- Awakenings -- Beauford Delaney -- Probings -- The expatriate -- Lucien and the mountain -- Go tell it on the mountain -- The search for Giovanni -- Notes of a Native son -- The Amen corner -- A period of transition -- Giovanni's room -- End of an era -- The journey South -- The call of the stage -- Sermons and blues -- In search of a role -- Nobody knows my name -- Another country -- Africa and The fire next time -- The activist -- Blues for Mister Charlie -- Lucien and the white problem -- Searching for a new life -- Istanbul -- Tell me how long the train's been gone -- One day, when I was lost -- No name in the street -- If Beale Street could talk -- The devil finds work -- Just above my head -- The evidence of things not seen: remember this house -- Gathering around the welcome table

Classification

Creator