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.
Picked this up after watching "I Am Not Your Negro" on Netflix. The collection was not very nicely put together, some of the speeches could have been omitted as the material became repetitive. But I liked whatever I listened to. Don't think I can review the content, except everything he said feels true today as well, and that is heartbreaking.
It's already been mentioned how horrible the editing is, especially with some speeches repeated multiple times throughout, always cut and sliced at odd moments. But add to that the fact that track 16 ISN'T EVEN JAMES BALDWIN. Unless he was able to somehow make reference to Kanye West's criticism of George W. Bush following Hurricane Katrina, despite Baldwin's having died in 1987...
I am claiming to have finished with this audiobook, but there are almost 11 hours to go. This audiobook has problems.
1) Sound quality: I don't think any effort has been made to clean up old audio tapes, so there are minutes when I hear nothing but pops, clicks, and static. Baldwin's voice disappears altogether. Some tracks begin or end mid-sentence.
2) Curation: These tracks come with no information whatsoever about where Baldwin was, when, what the occasion was, whom he was speaking with or sharing the stage with--really nothing about the speeches and lectures at all. I even think there is some double dipping as I am rather sure his London debate speech shows up twice or more.
3) Some of the speeches aren't even Baldwin's. Track 15, in which the speaker mentions the police brutality in Ferguson, MO, certainly isn't Baldwin, but this collection doesn't identify who the speaker is.
I will probably finish this for real, but if you're seeing this, try to find a collection that does Baldwin a service. He deserved better than this collection.
This collection of Baldwin’s speeches and lectures are available on Hoopla and I couldn’t be more happy to find it on there. His thoughts are still extremely relevant till today and will be for a long time here in the US. We have come far as far as recognition of racial biases towards African Americans but we are no way near to well perform what we are supposed to do from a systemic level down to personal reckoning. Listening to Baldwin’s bold yet witty comments on certain events that occurred throughout his lifetime in his own voice is amazing!
This audio book gets 5 stars for Baldwin's content and a 3 or even a bit under for some issues with editing and sound quality, and some extraneous content. But rounding up for content.
Still, Baldwin shines through and it's great to hear his voice and pacing.
The content is good but whomever did the editing made some mistakes as serval of the recordings were identical. A digital remastering of the sound would also be quite helpful.