Re-Reading and Reflecting on James Baldwin: Rethinking Race and America
August 31, 2016
The last time I saw James Baldwin was at a memorial colloquium on Hoyt Fuller at Cornell University in 1984 at which we were both presenting. He was talking, as always, about the problematic reality and responsibility of race and writing, about his continuing amazement at White folk’s cultivated self-delusions concerning what they do for and to other people, and the harried and hassled hope he still held for America in spite of its chronic and seemingly incurable race- induced sickness. This re-reading of Baldwin in this his month of birth, August 2 (1924- 1987), is done in respectful remembrance