Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Bantam Books, New York
Date Published: 1964
Description: A good reading copy only. Previous owners name inscribed inside front. May have underlining or highlighting throughout. Book has tanning or browning due to normal aging process. -, Mass Market PaperBack, Good / read more
Description: Very Good. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. Book shows wear to cover edges and spine. Writing in book. Marks on cover. Corners bent/rounded. Cover may have folds or creases. Otherwise in good reading condition. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Beacon
Date Published: 1963
Description: Fair. Yellowed pages, but book appears to be unread. Free, automatic1st class upgrade for books under 14 ounces. Free Priority upgrade to all domestic orders over $20.00. Satisfaction guaranteed. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Beacon Press
Date Published: 1984
ISBN-13:9780807064313ISBN:0807064319
Description: Acceptable. Highlighting. Light curl to front cover. Light rubbing to covers and corners due to general use and shelving. Notes or marks from past owner. Underlining. Buy with confidence-Satisfaction Guaranteed! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Beacon Press
Date Published: 1984
ISBN-13:9780807064313ISBN:0807064319
Description: Good. Hardcover. Modest wear. Pages lightly tanned, clean and unmarked aside from former owners name on inside front cover. Binding tight. read more
Binding: S Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam
Date Published: 1968
Description: Very Good. This book has toned some with age and bears some light handling wear. Its pages are free from any markings and its spine is uncreased. It's tight, solid and in great condition in every other regard. You'll be thrilled when this book gets to you! ! ! read more
Description: Acceptable. Former Library book. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
"James Baldwin's reflections on feeling like an interloper while having to adopt a Euro-American cultural heritage are poignant and go a long way in describing why African diasporic cultural contributions are so popular and significant. While forced into co-opting a culture past not-their-own and applying a new aesthetics, African-Americans have forever changed the landscape of Western art and culture."
"Read the introduction as well as the 20 page essay that is also the book title.
I must have read Baldwin at a young age -- cannot now remember having done so.
The essay is powerful, powerful, powerful. Baldwin's writing is sparse, elemental, and surgical. He as no time for word play or oblique narrative flow. But neither is in a hurry to make a point. He gets right to it but then finds deeper and deeper kernels within and within and within the words and feelings.
The topic is the death of his father. But also how hatred and bitterness come as natural but are not voiceable by his father nor by him. If this essay doesn't give you a feel for how every black man (and perhaps most brown men) are really slow fusing bombs, than nothing will and you will have to go through life never understanding the potential spontaneous combustion of human beings.
There is a scene that I will never forget: He walks into a restaurant that he knows will not serve him, damages the restaurant when he is not served, and risks his life and the life of others with murderous rage.
There can be no doubt that for Baldwin the writing process is an attempted self-cure against the bitterness and hatred that infect his heart. And there is no doubt that his writing serves as a balm for us as well.
Read this essay and glimpse the power of a slow motion explosion shown in words.
Two criticisms:
1. In describing Africans, Baldwin falls to easy stereotypes. To me this shows that even the great black writers have, dare I say it, a kind of racism that comes from US exceptionalism.
2. His love for his country (apparent and claimed in the introduction) shows a lack of self-critical consciousness about world affairs."
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