Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes Of A Native Son

by James Baldwin

Baldwin's early essays have been described as 'an unequalled meditation on what it means to be black in America' . This rich and stimulating collection contains 'Fifth Avenue, Uptown: a Letter from Harlem', polemical pieces on the tragedies inflicted by racial segregation and a poignant account of his first journey to 'the Old Country' , the southern states. Yet equally compelling are his 'Notes for a Hypothetical Novel' and personal reflections on being American, on oother major artists - Ingmar Bergman and Andre Gide, Norman Mailer and Richard Wright - and on the first great conferance of Negro - American writers and artists in Paris.

In his introduction Baldwin descrides the writer as requiring 'every ounce of stamina he can summon to attempt to look on himself and the world as they are' ; his uncanny ability to do just that is proclaimed on every page of this famous book.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Race, Classics, History, African American, Memoir

189 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 1961

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Works of American writer James Arthur Baldwin, outspoken critic of racism, include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), a novel, and Notes of a Native Son (1955), a collection of essays.

James Arthur Baldwin authored plays and poems in society.

He came as the eldest of nine children; his stepfather served as a minister. At 14 years of age in 1938, Baldwin preached at the small fireside Pentecostal church in Harlem. From religion in the early 1940s, he transferred his faith to literature with the still evident impassioned cadences of black churches. From 1948, Baldwin made his home primarily in the south of France but often returned to the United States of America to lecture or to teach.

In his Giovanni's Room, a white American expatriate must come to terms with his homosexuality. In 1957, he began spending half of each year in city of New York.

James Baldwin offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s.
He first partially autobiographically accounted his youth. His influential Nobody Knows My Name and The Fire Next Time informed a large white audience. Another Country talks about gay sexual tensions among intellectuals of New York. Segments of the black nationalist community savaged his gay themes. Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers stated the Baldwin displayed an "agonizing, total hatred of blacks." People produced Blues for Mister Charlie , play of Baldwin, in 1964. Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, defended Baldwin.

Going to Meet the Man and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone provided powerful descriptions. He as an openly gay man increasingly in condemned discrimination against lesbian persons.

From stomach cancer, Baldwin died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. People buried his body at the Ferncliff cemetery in Hartsdale near city of New York.

Reviews

[Robert Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Baldwin should be read by anyone and everyone. Any commentary I could make would do poor service to his writing and his ideas, but the more and more I read this book the more I appreciate his voice, reasoned, calm, pleading of an understanding to the issue of race which even the most "liberated" of us only poorly grasp.

Even more, knowing this collection of essays was written nearly fifty years ago, it is hard to imagine how deeply we have sunk back into a sense of complacency regarding race issues and discrimination. Of course, now it isn't black people we fear, but brown people, an even more insidious adjective of difference. There are Mexicans who are "stealing" our jobs and taking our money; there are Muslims who "hate us for our freedoms", who we cannot see as anything other than terrorists in turbans dedicated to blowing themselves and us up, even though Islam was one of the more liberal ideologies in regards to women's rights. How sad it is that we cannot get past our stereotypes we have of others, that we cannot devote ourselves to truly changing the world. I can only imagine what is ultimately wrong with us, and whether we can overcome ourselves, or if there is any hope for us. We can only dream and keep trying, and perhaps one day, we will.

[Lucy Dacus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greatest of all time.

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another deeply insightful and affecting essay collection written by the Master of both the pessimistic and the hopeful.

What Mr. Baldwin writes about the black experience was true then, and true today that "all Negro cultures were suffering was due to the fact that their political destinies were not in their hands" (Baldwin 15).

His pain bleeds through the pages of this eloquent essay collection that is both an admiration and critique of how such literary figures like William Faulkner and Norman Mailer could be such gorgeously rendered creators of art- then end up disappointingly tone deaf of the injustices that the black community often feels, with an air of dismissiveness that can be summed through "black men held in common was their ache to come into the world as men" (Baldwin 29) and how their white counterparts, no matter how much they claim to be allies, fail.

The most affecting part of "Nobody Knows My Name" are Mr. Baldwin's rage, grief, and ultimately, love and admiration for fellow writer and protestor, Richard Wright.

Perhaps it was their age difference, upbringing and point of views on race and gender that may have both brought them together, yet caused them to fall apart; nonetheless, this is an unforgettable collection that is still just as relevant today as an indictment on how the black community continues to be dismissed.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't even know how to begin to express my feelings about this book, so I won't even try. All I know is that the entire day went by while reading it and I didn't even notice because I was so involved in what the author is saying here and in his writing. It's like having a conversation with the man.

There are a LOT of things that the author says that continue to remain pertinent to this day -- especially to this day -- and it really needs to be read, digested and remembered. It will also seriously make its readers spend some time in think time and introspection, which is a good thing. I'm buying every book of his I can get my hands on. If that's not a recommendation, I don't know what is.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here I am, back with Baldwin, to understand the passion in his prose, the sharpness to his sentences. There are moments that I find myself reach for Baldwin. These are one of those moments. As usual, his elegant writing style and casual erudition is comforting, his nonfiction clear and provocative.

Two things I liked best about this collection: 1) the order in which the essays are arranged (thanks to the editor) and 2) the glimpses at Baldwin's inner struggles, which brought me closer to learning more about one of my favorite authors:

"And here I was, at thirty-two, finding my notoriety hard to bear, since its principal effect was to make me more lonely; money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did; and love, as far as I could see, was over. Love seemed to be over not merely because an affair was ending; it would have seemed to be over under any circumstances; for it was the dream of love which was ending. I was beginning to realize, most unwillingly, all the things love could not do. It could not make me over, for example. It could not undo the journey which had made of me such a strange man and brought me to such a strange place."

Some of my favorites:
1. "The Discovery of What It Means To Be An American" because Baldwin is searing in his probe to live unlimited as a writer, a search which leads him to Paris.

2. "Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter From Harlem" is an exploration of the moral and social bankruptcy upon which Harlem's projects were founded. The only place in New York that would accept former slaves escaping the south (at decent rent), Harlem became an enclave of poverty and art.

3. "A Fly in Buttermilk" explores the American South during integration. The story of young 'G' was uplifting as it provided a view of African American children in the south and how they risked their lives to attend newly integrated schools.

4. "Nobody Knows My Name: A Letter from the South" is an essay that was a bit personal to me; it is a juxtaposition of life in the American South and American North for an African American, just as I've made the decision to leave the American South after five (long) years and head back north.

5. "Alas, Poor Richard" delves into Baldwin's strained relationship with Richard Wright and in so doing, gives a sneak peek of Wright.

6. "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" is Baldwin's exploration of his complex friendship with Norman Mailer, a graceful story which affords the reader another angled view of Baldwin.

I leave you with a quote for the times. Written in the 1960s, it looks like it was written for today:

"The country will not change until it reexamines itself and discovers what it really means by freedom. In the meantime, generations keep being born, bitterness is increased by incompetence, pride, and folly, and the world shrinks around us."

[Daniel Chaikin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The next book in my track through Baldwin's works. I had trouble with some of his writing in Notes of a Native Son, but this is a more developed, cleaner writer and these essays are excellent. Baldwin is always on the attack through psychology. He's looking inward to find out how he really feels, and then he lets it out. The target is the myth of American white society and the consequences of it, particularly for racism. As he puts it, "There is an illusion about America, a myth about America to which we are clinging which has nothing to do with the lives we lead." Or, in another way, "the thing that most White people imagine that they can salvage from the storm of life is really in sum, their innocence... I am afraid that most white people I have ever known impressed me as being in the grip of a weird nostalgia, dreaming of a vanished state of security and order..."

Included here are essays he wrote after his first tour of the American south, where he looks into the pioneers of public school desegregation, children who are the only black person to attend their high school, and who deal with constant open ridicule of the students, and who are fighting for an education while being completely alone. The alternatives are the criminally useless all-black schools where nothing is taught. I should add, he's not shy on attacking divides within the Atlanta black community, creating extra types of segregation.

My favorite essay was his attack on Willam Faulkner, who considered himself a moderate intellectual, and yet was quoted as saying he would defend the South, and Mississippi, if necessary "even if it meant going out in the streets and shooting Negroes," !! Baldwin writes, "Faulkner--among so many others--is so plaintive concerning this "middle of the road" from which "extremist" elements of both races are driving him that it does not seem unfair just to ask what he has been doing there until now. Where is the evidence of the struggle he has been carrying on there on behalf of the Negro? Why, if he and his enlightened confreres in the South have been boring from within to destroy segregation, do they react with such panic when the walls show any signs of falling? Why--and how--does one move from the middle of the road where one was aiding Negroes into the streets--to shoot them?"

I'm quite fascinated by this path through Baldwin's work. I've started Another Country, his 3rd novel (which starts off wonderfully), and then I'll get to his most famous essays in The Fire Next Time. I might be looking forward to that a little.

-----------------------------------------------

32. Nobody Knows My Name : More Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
published: 1961
format: 150 pages inside Collected Essays: Notes of a Native Son / Nobody Knows My Name / The Fire Next Time / No Name in the Street / The Devil Finds Work / Other Essays
acquired: December
read: Jun 30 – Jul 6
time reading: 6 hr 22 min, 2.7 min/page
rating: 4

[Andre · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a framework
This is an accurate depiction of the African-American liberation conflict. These collected musings have a superior way of giving us an understanding of America's identity crisis. Another favorite blueprint of African American life is The Narratives of Frederick Douglass. Both classics serve as a complete instrument in seeing into the underlying issues of America's oldest and most oppressed demographic group. The modern day proletarian could read the Narratives of FD and Nobody Knows My Name, while also reading into his own personal experiences, and receive a complete education about his relationship with the world. Frederick's story plays out in the rural south during America's slave holding period. In comparison, Baldwin gives us a rendition of the same tyranny set in different urban areas in the modern 20th century. Baldwin's judgment balances a cool attitude of acceptance with a fiery resistance against our terrorizing civilization.
James Baldwin is Black America's identity theft counselor. A common theme in his essays is the search for personal integrity. His genius awakens in his explanations. Again, this very topic is set within the context of different places in NKMN. Baldwin was loyal to a purpose that had faced obscurity in our country, i.e. redeeming the spiritual health of the descendants of Africa. While we drown in a sea of false identities, he poignantly brings to surface the incessant issues facing us. There is a poet inside of this essayist. To take from Nietzsche's idea of a poet, 'he brings down curtains of illusion to reveal more of the truth.' Baldwin pulls down matters of 'fact' to reveal the truth of the matter. Moreover, he writes as if he is the only authorized curtain puller in town!

Breakthrough in historiography
Baldwin's popularity (and background) grants him the opportunity to share with the public an unpopular history of our nationhood. He does this with conversational style of writing. His prose demystifies the happenings of our 'magic kingdom.' He reminds us, like our politicians, that we are a nation of immigrants. However, he takes his point a step further. He asks, 'What is the face of America?' Every country can paint a man or woman to represent its citizens. What about America? This has been our incessant problem since the beginning. A problem seeking a renewed solution- if not a renewed purpose.
The setting in Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A letter from Harlem is the centerpiece of every other setting in this essay. Baldwin takes a stroll down his neighborhood. You can hear the soul music. One can recall that the soul genre is the elder child of the blues. He vividly describes the highs and lows of life in Harlem. This section evokes warm feelings of community. On another note, accounts of oppression lay over a tender tonality. The reader plainly sees the disturbing contradictions in north Manhattan.
Princes and Powers and Nobody Knows My Name: A Letter from the South are two favorites in this essay. These pieces give us different approaches to his universal theme of identity crisis. These two are just as remarkable as his conversation from Harlem. Princes and Powers provides a global view of the African Diaspora and its identity. The Conference of Negro-African Writers and Artist in Paris brings seemingly disparate ideas and people into a unity. We see the issues that pervade Negro peoples on a global level. JB goes on to state that the African American can play on a global scale when he sees where he fits on the world's stage. Of course, this vision has to embody Africa with her diversity of cultures. The motherland cannot be viewed simply as a colonial zone for propping up western society.
The entitled section Nobody Knows My Name: A Letter from the South is even more endearing. The boy's mother reminds me of my own mother. I am reminded of her desire to keep me away from the trouble that was waiting for me in Southeast Texas. She geared me away from certain things to ensure that certain images wouldn't pull me into a dark world. This dark world of obscurity was waiting for me and other black and brown skinned boys in southeast Texas. But this section also reminded me of a mother's limitations. As protective as many mothers desire to be, there are still great dark forces looming over them and their cubs.
The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy is a surprising look at the hipster culture in America. I nicknamed this part of the collection 'the poser section.' Lets just say this story reverberates the reason why decent ideas like Tarentino's Django will never represent justice in America's race issues. The movie utterly fails despite its good intentions.

The missing ingredient
It is realized that the limited mono-cultural mythology in the US can produce a lot of confusion as to who we are as individuals. We can no longer ignore the voices in our nation that are crying out for someone to listen. Solutions that have tried to pacify racism were really disguises to avoid confrontation with what really needs to be done. We need to establish dialog. Our social problems are not caused by bad policy or economic inequality. Our solutions cannot be found in some new business model or a new political agenda. Simply put, we need more stories. We don't understand each other. Nobody Knows My Name has been a siren call from the underground. We have been reminded that there are voices willing to speak up. All we need to do is listen.

[B. P. Rinehart · Rating 5 out of 5]

"'Be careful what you set your heart upon,' someone once said to me, 'for it will surely be yours.' Well, I had said that I was going to be a writer, God, Satan, and Mississippi not-withstanding, and that color did not matter, and that I was going to be free. And, here I was, left only myself to deal with. It was entirely up to me.
These essays are a very small part of a private logbook. The question of color takes up much space in these pages, but the question of color, especially in this country, operates to hide the graver questions of the self."


The Writer Vs. The World

I've been reading essays from this book for almost 2 years, but only now have I read the whole thing together. This book is an interesting examination of being an American & African-American writer in the late 1950s-1961. It is Baldwin's examination of himself as a writer and of other writers he has come across. Writers like Aimé Césaire, William Faulkner, André Gide, Ingmar Bergman, Norman Mailer, and most profoundly Richard Wright are some of the personalities that Baldwin goes into deep and critical examination with. Places like Harlem, New York; Paris, France; Stockholm, Sweden; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Atlanta, Georgia are the places he deals with. While Baldwin deals primarily with race (and secondarily with homosexuality--especially with his essay on Gide), as he explains in his introduction, his main inquiry is into people themselves and how a writer goes about examining different folks. His essays cover things like his homecoming to Harlem after 9 years, his participation at the 1956 Conference of Black-African Writers and Artists, a radical re-write of his earlier essay Journey To Atlanta, writing seminars, and profiles of different figures.

Undoubtedly, the heart of this book is his profile/eulogy of Richard Wright. Wright had been the idol of many black writers in the middle of the 20th century, but he had an especially close relationship with Ralph Ellison & James Baldwin. As both writers became more individual and less fond of Wright's world view and his socialist-realist writing-style their relationship strained. I already knew of Ellison's split with essays like Richard Wright's Blues & The World and the Jug and his more sympathetic recollection in his essay Remembering Richard Wright. Baldwin documents in this book how mutual misunderstandings in the aftermath of Everybody's Protest Novel (and certainly Many Thousands Gone) led to a hostile air between them that was not patch up at Wright's death and left Baldwin in remorse for it.

This book was put together as Another Country was being finished and it is obviously on his mind. The weight in which the subject of being a writer weighs on his mind is very present. Also, I have to pay tribute to how well this collection of essays was sequenced--like a "continuously playing" album.

[philosophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The question of color takes up much space in these pages, but the question of color, especially in this country, operates to hide the graver questions of the self. That is precisely why what we like to call “the Negro problem” is so tenacious in American life, and so dangerous. But my own experience proves to me that the connection between American whites and blacks is far deeper and more passionate than any of us like to think.

Κάθε άνθρωπος, και παραφράζω εδώ τον Richard Ayoade στο Submarine, θέλει να νοιώθει μοναδικός, πως δεν υπάρχει κανείς ίδιος με εκείνον στον κόσμο• ο Baldwin στο εισαγωγικό του κείμενο ασχολείται με αυτή ακριβώς τη διάσταση, της μοναδικότητας, της ιδιαιτερότητας της εμπειρίας του που τον ενώνει μάλλον παρά τον διαχωρίζει από τον υπόλοιπο κόσμο, κι αναγνωρίζει κρυφούς νόμους που κινούν τα νήματα της κοινωνίας, ανείπωτες παραδοχές με τις οποίες οφείλει να καταπιαστεί ο καλλιτέχνης, προκειμένου να φανερώσει μια έξοδο από τα ταμπού και τους περιορισμούς.

[…]there was something which all black men held in common, something which cut across opposing points of view, and placed in the same context their widely dissimiliar experience. […] What, in sum, black men held in common was their ache to come into the world as men. And this ache united people who might otherwise have been divided as to what a man should be.

Ο Baldwin, μεροληπτικός όπως ομολογεί, ασχολείται κατεξοχήν με τις φυλετικές σχέσεις στην Αμερική, ενδιαφέρεται ιδιαίτερα για την αφομοίωση που επέβαλε η αποικιοκρατία, με τις συγκεκριμένες σχέσεις να απαιτούν από το άτομο να αποκοπεί από το πλαίσιο στο οποίο όφειλε την ταυτότητά του, να αντικαταστήσει τις συνήθειές του, τις σκέψεις και τις δράσεις του από ένα άλλο σύνολο συνηθειών που ανήκε στους ξένους που τον κυριάρχησαν. Ως εκ τούτου, ένας λαός στερημένος από πολιτική κυριαρχία θεωρεί σχεδόν αδύνατο να αναδημιουργήσει για τον εαυτό του την εικόνα του παρελθόντος του κι αυτή η αέναη αναδημιουργία αποτελεί, σύμφωνα με τον συγγραφέα, απόλυτη αναγκαιότητα αν όχι, πράγματι, τον ορισμό ενός ζωντανού πολιτισμού. Η διάσταση αυτή έλειπε, νομίζω, από το Notes of a Native Son και τίθεται εδώ σε περίοπτη θέση με αφορμή το συνέδριο του 1956 στο Παρίσι, Le Congrès des Ecrivains et Artistes Noirs. Στο κείμενο Princes and Powers οι απόψεις του Baldwin για το ζήτημα των μαύρων προφέρεται καλειδοσκοπικά, παράλληλα με τις απόψεις του Richard Wright, του W. E. B. Du Bois, κι άλλων γνωστών λογοτεχνών και κοινωνιολόγων. Στο συνέδριο εξετάζεται, μεταξύ άλλων, η άποψη πως η κουλτούρα δεν είναι ένα στοιχείο που δίνεται στους ανθρώπους μα κάτι που οι άνθρωποι διαμορφώνουν μόνοι τους, αλλά και η γνώμη πως

Too great a sense of identity makes a man feel he can do no wrong. And too little does the same.

Είναι σταθερή η πεποίθηση του Baldwin, και πρόδηλη σε όλα τα έργα του, πως η χώρα δεν θα αλλάξει αν δεν αναθεωρήσει ορισμένα χαρακτηριστικά της κι αν δεν ανακαλύψει την ακριβή σημασία της ελευθερίας, πως στο πρόσωπο του θύματος ο θύτης βλέπει τον εαυτό του, γιατί η άρνηση της ανθρωπιάς κάποιου συνεπάγεται με την ελάττωση της ανθρωπιάς σε προσωπικό επίπεδο.

Nor do I blame anyone in Harlem for making the best of a dreadful bargain. But anyone who lives in Harlem and imagines that he has not struck this bargain, or that what he takes to be his status (in whose eyes?) protects him against the common pain, demoralization and danger, is simply self-deluded.

Ο Baldwin καταγράφει την πικρία με την οποία γεννιέται κάθε νέα γενιά, το δυσάρεστο αίσθημα του κάθε πατέρα που εξαρτάται από τη δύναμη και την καλοσύνη κάποιου άλλου ανθρώπου για την ευημερία του σπιτιού του, αναλύει το μύθο του μαύρου, με βάση τον οποίο ο λευκός θέτει τα δικά του όρια και κυρίως τα όρια της πτώσης του ανάλογα με τα χαρακτηριστικά που έχει προσδώσει στον μαύρο, χαρακτηριστικά που έρχονται ως συνέπεια του φόβου προς τον Άλλο. Σύμφωνα με τον Baldwin

As long as we can deal with the Negro as a kind of statistic, as something to be manipulated, something to be fled from, or something to be given something to, there is something we can avoid, and what we can avoid is what he really, really means to us.

Ο Baldwin, τέλος, καλεί τους ανθρώπους να εξετάσουν τη δύναμή τους, να σπάσουν τα δεσμά των ρόλων και των στάσεών τους, να πάρουν την κατάσταση της χώρας τους και των προβλημάτων της στα χέρια τους, υπογραμμίζοντας πως

The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding collection of Baldwin's essays from previous publications in Harper's, Esquire, Partisan Review, and a handful of transcripts from public speeches. Topics vary from literary and film criticism, desegregation, sexuality, travels in the US South, French intellectual life, spiritual beliefs, Harlem, etc. Many offer autobiographical details about his childhood, early writing career, friendships and fractures, his time in Paris, and his reasonings and return to the US.

Highlights and some "must-share" quotes:
- Princes and Powers: Baldwin's reportage of the Conference of Negro-African Writers and Artists in September 1956 at the Sorbonne in Paris. Baldwin shares details of the official speeches by midcentury luminaries, as well as his impressions on the larger state of culture and society.

- Faulkner and Desegregation: Literary criticism of Faulkner, and Faulkner's stance on de/segregation. Baldwin slices right to the heart of the southern psyche with several quotes: "What seems to define a southerner, in his own mind at any rate, is his relationship to the North, that is to the rest of the Republic, a relationship which can be at the very best be described as uneasy...the southerner clings to two entirely antithetical doctrines, two legends, two histories... He is part of a country that boasts that it has never lost a war, but he is also a representative of a conquered nation."

- In Search of a Majority: I conceive of my own life as a journey toward something I do not understand, which in the going toward, makes me better. I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others. Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up."

- Alas, Poor Richard: Hard to identify a favorite in a book of outstanding pieces, but this one was all kinds of layers and may be the one that stays with me the longest - Upon Richard Wright's death in November 1960, Baldwin shares the story of their close friendship and their well-known falling out, from their early meetings as mentor/mentee, their European associations, and eventually their philosophical break. Baldwin is utterly honest and transparent here - speaking of his idolization and approval-seeking, and how this dynamic contributed to the later rupture. Amidst this personal story, Baldwin shares thoughts on several of Wright's works, notably some short stories that I was unfamiliar and quite intrigued by... prompting a click to pick up a used copy of Wright's collected fictions.

5/5* Made copious notes and tagged up the text for review/ revisit later.

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

JB tone appeared to me to be more mature than the previous essay book I read Notes of a Native Son. I think the changes JB goes through at this time, realising that he needs to go back to America in order to grow as a man and a writer and his visits to the American south, have caused a shift in his writing. Even handling of the relationships with fellow writers Richard Wright and Norman Mailer have a certain empathy, gentle understanding.

As always an introspective read.

Read with Maya June 2016 - another stop in our Baldwin journey.

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always, brilliance and truth from James Baldwin.

[Zack]

for various reasons i have this self imposed rule that I don't give stars to books on goodreads. yet, for this book, i must break my rule because i feel the need to offset the IDIOTS who gave this book less than five stars.

this is a book about race and understanding. a kind plea for love in the face of the ignorance of the times.

i have never seen a writer who mixes so well frustration and anger with empathy love and understanding. this book is extremely courageous...he's talking about what it's like to be a gay african american in late fifties and early sixties. talking about that is kind of taboo now in the US...but in the fucking fifties?! dear lord.

he's so smart. he seems to see right through the people he writes about...seeing their mask and seeing them without their masks...seeing their beauty...seeing where they are coming from...seeing the difficulties they face. all their beauty and their ugliness.

he also writes a lot about himself and his perspective...he is raw and open and fearless. he is so loving to himself and just so loving in general. a lot of the sentences where he writes about himself starts with "I didn't understand then that..."

in the book he comes back from france (after a 10 year visit because he wanted to escape the racism and homophobia of the USA) and visits the south for the first time. he talks about what was going on their with the first black children that started to go to all white schools. it's a book about people...courageous flawed beautiful people.

a lot of the essays end with kind of a call to action which could seem cheesy but it is so genuine. you can tell he really feels inspired and knows that he is inspiring other people too.

read anything and everything you can get your hands on by Baldwin but especially this work from the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties. sad that he died at 67 and is no longer with us. i got the impression when i read this book "i really want to meet this man...i know i wouldn't be the same afterwards" happy that he left so much writing for us to understand. he work seems just as relevant today (somewhat unfortunately) than it did when it was written.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of 13 essays, its title suggesting that Baldwin is going to expound on 'the race problem'. Certainly that is more than touched on; it is part of the glue that holds the book together. But the collection is much more than that. Throughout, the overall theme involves 'what it means to be human'. And the 'problem' of being black - here, overall - is less the problem of those who are black than those who are not. ~which is, of course, what racism is.

Baldwin did not just write each essay; he crafted them. The ideas and thoughts within are not terribly difficult to grapple with - but Baldwin has imbued his essays with such an elevation of perception that they seem to demand something near the same amount of time to be absorbed as they probably took to write. Very often I had to stop after single sentences or paragraphs to let them more fully sink in. ~or just to savor them.

There is brilliance here.

Two vibrant sub-themes stand out: What it means to be a writer - and what it means to be an American (and, by extension, what America means as a country; more specifically, Baldwin explores the 'myth' of America).

We're taken into more of the inner lives of people such as Faulkner, Mailer, Gide, Richard Wright - and even, surprisingly, Ingmar Bergman (who Baldwin interviewed).

But it's the 'ghost' of America which, more than anything else, haunts this book. Through it, much is brought to light about the underbelly of America. It's the kind of urgent information that, for me anyway, supplements in a way more personally satisfying than what I have been gathering just from books dealing with political science. ~not that those latter books are of any small importance.

These essays were written in the late '50s. They are not merely 'of historical interest'. They largely continue to speak to the world of today - to our world, as Americans. They speak to an America that still, after all these years, has yet to master its identity and fulfill its promise.

[Fran Levi Aghuyo]

A beautiful book with a powerful message.

[max theodore · Rating 5 out of 5]

what an absolute joy, to be two weeks into 2024 and already know i've read one of my best books of the year. it's hard for me to describe exactly what it is about baldwin's writing that knocks me flat; maybe it's that his prose is so gorgeous without being overwrought or even particularly flowery. he has a way of cutting right to the truth of the matter, and doing it in language both perfectly suited and perfectly natural. his words are challenging in content and yet ever readable, and gripping, and gorgeous. honestly, he makes it look easy. but you're aware of the gears beneath the surface of each essay, the way that his writing works and how carefully crafted it is, how every word is chosen perfectly.

i was also shocked by how relevant these essays are. this collection was published in 1961; most of these essays were written in the 50s; and yet baldwin's observations on racial relations, american identity, black identity, and writing itself (among lots of other things) are still so sharp and perceptive. i can't describe it any other way than a dedication to the absolute truth of everything; he takes the most direct route there and doesn't hem and haw about what people will say. i just. i need to read everything he ever wrote. i'm genuinely upset that he died before i was born because i'd trade at least three fingers to hear him give a lecture.

i don't know how else to emphasize this review, so i'm just going to copy in some of the quotes i underlined (but not all, because then we'd be here forever):

I still believe that the unexamined life is not worth living: and I know that self-delusion, in the service of no matter what small or lofty cause, is a price no writer can afford. His subject is himself and the world and it requires every ounce of stamina he can summon to attempt to look on himself and the world as they are.
___

What they held in common was their precarious, their unutterably painful relation to the white world. What they held in common was the necessity to remake the world in their own image, to impose this image on the world, and no longer be controlled by the vision of the world, and of themselves, held by other people. What, in sum, black men held in common was their ache to come into the world as men.
___

...for the future is like heaven—everyone exalts it but no one wants to go there now.
___

"I've never seen a colored person toward whom I had any hatred or ill-will."

His eyes searched mine as he said this and I knew that he was wondering if I believed him.

I certainly did believe him; he impressed me as being a very gentle and honorable man. But I could not avoid wondering if he had ever really looked at a Negro and wondered about the life, the aspirations, the universal humanity hidden behind the dark skin.
___

One cannot afford to lose status on this peculiar ladder [of social class in America], for the prevailing notion of American life seems to involve a kind of rung-by-rung ascension to some hideously desirable state. If this is one's concept of life, obviously one cannot afford to slip back a rung. [...] And this reason, this fear, suggests to me one of the real reasons for the status of the Negro in this country. In a way, the Negro tells us where the bottom is: because he is there, and where he is, beneath us, we know where the limits are and how far we must not fall.
___

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.

have i convinced you. have you read baldwin. would you read baldwin. will you read baldwin. when will you read baldwin

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

America has no greater writer and critic than Baldwin. I would give him 10 stars for everything he's ever written. This book is superb and I am not worthy to offer a critique.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never want to stop reading this.
It is chewy like toffee, has the sharp clarity of a handful of topaz, & still has the urgency of a horse race.
I cannot believe that anyone has ever been this insightful, smart, & compassionate about the failings of his fellow man, while still being able to see their faults in startling clarity.

[ink · Rating 4 out of 5]

kinda jealous of his life experience because i relate to him so much

[Barnabas Piper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baldwin is brilliant. As in any collection of essays some are more relevant or striking than others, but the writing is always magnificent.

[Eliana Rivero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Y en todo caso, lo realmente espantoso del esfuerzo por comunicar a un blanco la realidad de la experiencia negra no tiene nada que ver con el hecho de la raza, sino que depende de la relación del blanco con su propia vida. Él mirará a la cara, en la vida de uno, solo lo que está dispuesto a mirar a la cara en la vida suya.

"Nadie sabe mi nombre" es el primer libro de ensayos que leo de James Baldwin y me ha encantado. No solo por la temática que trata, que va mucho de la identidad norteamericana y afroamericana, sino también por su prosa impecable, implacable, segura y certera. Mientras iba leyendo me daba cuenta que tal como escribía, de esa forma debía hablar. Hay mucha pasión, mucha ironía, muchas palabras cuidadosamente puestas para que sea un libro brillante. Algunas de las frases que se lanza son increíbles por lo crudamente verdaderas que son.

Esta serie de ensayos los escribe Baldwin luego de 10 años viviendo en París. Hay de todo un poco: ensayos sobre identidad, sobre el lugar donde nació y creció (Harlem), sobre el sur de los Estados Unidos, sobre otros escritores y artistas que tienen que ver con raza o sexualidad (Faulkner, Gide, Bergman, Malier, Wright), sobre algunos acontecimientos vividos en París, etc.

Por supuesto que la raza y la situación afroamericana abarca la mayor parte del libro. Lo que me gusta es que Balwin cuenta las cosas desde su perspectiva, desde el ojo de quien ha vivido, sentido y sobrevivido algo absurdo, fatal e histórico. Aunque pueda parecerlo, no se atribuye la voz de nadie, cosa que me agrada, porque es desde su voz que termina siendo una representación para quienes vivieron o viven lo mismo que él: ser negro en Estados Unidos y ser discriminado por ello.

Mis ensayos favoritos fueron "El descubrimiento de lo que significa ser americano", "A una carta desde Harlem. East River abajo: Post-scriptum" y "Alas, poor Richard".

Ya quiero leer más de él.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply stunning, and disheartening. To think that this was written in the mid-50s and how much of it is still prescient and relevant to racial strife today. If you've not read this, sit down with it for a little while. The parallels of today leap off the page. And Baldwin's writing is direct, sincere, and not egotistical. I would love to write this way!

[sevdah]

In every collection of essays, some are good and some are not as good. Only with Baldwin, the good are absolutely brilliant, and the not as good are merely excellent. To think he wrote those in the 1950s is almost beyond belief - his ideas on race and identity in the States are illuminating even today.

[Jessica Gartner · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you handed someone this book with no cover, no author, they'd be hard-pressed to believe it hadn't been written last week. Baldwin's commentary on American race relations, education, and national identity ring as true today as they must have in 1961. It is infinitely quotable and uncomfortably relevant.

"... the majority for which everyone is seeking which must reassess and release us from our past and deal with the present and create standards worthy of what a man may be - this majority is you. No one else can do it. The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in."

"A country is only as good - I don't care now about the Constitution and the laws, at the moment let us leave these things aside - a country is only as strong as the people who make it up and the country turns into what the people want it to become. Now, this country is going to be transformed. It will not be transformed by an act of God, but by all of us, by you and me. I don't believe any longer that we can afford to say that it is entirely out of our hands. We made the world we're living in and we have to make it over."

[Elizabeth☮ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays by Baldwin published from the late fifties to the early sixties.

Some of my favorite quotes:

"We have a a very deep-seated distrust of real intellectual effort, probably because we suspect that it will destroy, as I hope it does, that myth of America to which we cling so desperately."

"The only society they {American writers} know is one in which nothing is fixed and in which the individual must fight for his identity."

"...the inequalities suffered by the many are in no way justified by the rise of the few."

"The emptier our hearts become, the greater will be our crimes."

"The goal of the student movement is nothing less than the liberation of the entire country from its most crippling attitudes and habits."

"I have the right and duty, for example, in my country, to vote; but it is my country's responsibility to protect my right to vote."

"It {segregation} has allowed white people, with scarely any pangs of conscience, whatever, to create, in every generation, only the Negro they wished to see."

"They {Southerners} never seriously conceded that their social structure was mad."

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A more personal set of essays than Notes, and I can’t name all the essays I loved but Princes and Powers stands out as the most memorable to me because I rarely read essays about the experience of a conference… and it’s one I’ll likely reread after I research some of the writers who spoke. The title essay is brutal and beautiful. The writings on Faulkner, Wright and Mailer were thoroughly enjoyable but I’ll never forget the digs at Kerouac and the beats (the quoted Kerouac is something I’ve never read but found eye-rollingly ridiculous). I think I did well reading Notes and this collection back-to-back. Would recommend to others.

[Katie ratherbereadinggg · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars

[erigibbi · Rating 4 out of 5]

[3.5]

Una raccolta di saggi; alcuni li ho trovati molto stimolanti, mi hanno tenuta incollata alle pagine, altri invece mi hanno annoiata e mi dispiace sempre quando succede perché quando Baldwin parla di cose che mi interessano, cavolo, sottolineerei qualsiasi frase e mi fa venire voglia di leggere qualsiasi sua opera. Poi però arrivano queste parti e la voglia mi passa un po’.
“Quinta strada, Uptown: una lettera da Harlem” è stato il capitolo che ho preferito. L’ho trovato molto attuale (purtroppo); spiega alcune situazioni, condizioni, meccanismi (Harlem, i ghetti) di cui non leggo spesso.
Devo dire che per quanti libri legga sull’argomento, mi sembra sempre di saperne così poco – probabilmente perché c’è così tanto da dire – e mi sembra pure di non imparare nulla, non per colpa dei libri, che racchiudono davvero tanto, ma per colpa mia, come se fossi troppo ancorata nella mia vita di persona bianca.
Nonostante alcuni saggi un po’ sottotono, ho terminato il libro col desiderio di leggere qualcosa di Baldwin in riferimento alla condizione degli afroamericani negli anni 2000 ad oggi. È un vero peccato che non ci potrà mai essere questa occasione.

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5*

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baldwin offers lots of fascinating commentary on a variety of subjects. As always, his acute intelligence and excellent writing are everywhere manifest. I liked his coverage of an African conference best. What a collection of African leaders assembled there! What a moment of hope for the continent and world! I loved Baldwin’s takes on Mailer, Wright, and Bergman too. And of course Baldwin’s take on American race relations are astute, cutting, globally and historically informed, objective.