James Baldwin

"I want to be an honest man and a good writer." That's a quote from James Baldwin. Want more? Here are some autobiographical notes by the author. (Free registration required.)

This is a tribute to Baldwin from the Boston Book Review. Here, you'll find some interesting biographical and critical notes. This page is a good place to visit if you're planning to do research on Baldwin.

Would you like to put Baldwin's work into a historical context? Here is a timeline of Baldwin's life, along with a bibliography and some critical notes that will provide you with a great deal of help along these lines.

Here is an article by Baldwin about Black English. What are your thoughts about Black English? If we don't recognize it as a language, what do we lose? If we relegate it to substandard status, do we gain anything? (Free registration required.)

This essay from The Threepenny Review describes Baldwin's interaction with the FBI. Baldwin had an FBI file due to his political activism, including his participation in the voter drive in Selma, Alabama in the early 1960s.

If the above essay whetted your appetite for more info about Baldwin and politics, guess what? Here is a very good general article about the Civil Rights Movement. It'll help you focus the context of Baldwin's work in this regard.

Did you know that Baldwin left the U.S. for a time in the middle of his life? Want to read more about it? Well, this essay explores various expatriate writers who lived in Paris, including Baldwin. How might this info help your research?

This page contains the liner notes he wrote for Maya Angelou's poetry record Black Pearls. (The advent of the CD has put a serious crimp in liner notes, by the way.) Speaking of records, can you link Baldwin's work to music?

This is his last published essay, from EssenceMagazine. Here, you'll find some valuable information about how Baldwin saw Harlem functioning as a symbol of race relations.

Here is a page of quotes by Baldwin. Did you find any that might help you in your own writing?