James Baldwin's Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile

by Magdalena Zaborowska

Between 1961 and 1971 James Baldwin spent extended periods of time in Turkey, where he worked on some of his most important books. In this first in-depth exploration of Baldwin’s “Turkish decade,” Magdalena J. Zaborowska reveals the significant role that Turkish locales, cultures, and friends played in Baldwin’s life and thought. Turkey was a nurturing space for the author, who by 1961 had spent nearly ten years in France and Western Europe and failed to reestablish permanent residency in the United States. Zaborowska demonstrates how Baldwin’s Turkish sojourns enabled him to re-imagine himself as a black queer writer and to revise his views of American identity and U.S. race relations as the 1960s drew to a close. Following Baldwin’s footsteps through Istanbul, Ankara, and Bodrum, Zaborowska presents many never published photographs, new information from Turkish archives, and original interviews with Turkish artists and intellectuals who knew Baldwin and collaborated with him on a play that he directed in 1969. She analyzes the effect of his experiences on his novel Another Country (1962) and on two volumes of his essays, The Fire Next Time (1963) and No Name in the Street (1972), and she explains how Baldwin’s time in Turkey informed his ambivalent relationship to New York, his responses to the American South, and his decision to settle in southern France. James Baldwin’s Turkish Decade expands the knowledge of Baldwin’s role as a transnational African American intellectual, casts new light on his later works, and suggests ways of reassessing his earlier writing in relation to ideas of exile and migration.

Genres: Biography, Travel, Queer, Nonfiction, History, Literary Criticism

416 pages, Hardcover

First published January 16, 2009

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aaaaa this is bliss

[Aaron Grossman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Academic, and a little dry. But also quite informative and interesting at times. I do not have a great knowledge of Baldwin's stuff from the 1960's, when he spent a great deal of time in Istanbul, so some of this went over my head, but nevertheless the book made me want to dive into that period of his career more.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

learned a lot about James Baldwin that I did not know before. The interviews and pictures added a lot to the book. I read it for class and will make it one of my "must keep" books.

[David Self · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magdalena Zaborowska takes you on a very personal tour of Baldwin's life during this time: friends, places, events and influences. It details how this time allowed him to re-contextualize his views of the USA and return home. He was not just escaping the world of prejudice and repression, he was inventing himself anew. Some great photos.

[Andrew Ward · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somebody's post-grad thesis.