Status Updates From James Baldwin: A Biography

..the consideration by some of Baldwin as an “Uncle Tom”, but his mind was profoundly perceptive as a witness and I believe his legacy and writing has demonstrated the value of his witnessing; and that’s not to mention his own civil rights work alongside all the patrons of the civil rights era. His quote there resonates with me, though, as it’s a long and lonely road to and from hometown, where racism is…

Some of Baldwin’s quotes are astoundingly resonant for a white man in this country: the effect of racism “is that white Americans have been one another’s jailers for generations, and the attempt at individual maturity is the loneliest and rarest of the American endeavors.” I’m certain that his focus on white Americans also suffering from the country’s original racist sin is what brought about the…

… an ignorant audience while suffering severely under its thumb.

Keenan spends some time representing Baldwin’s writing evolution as between two modes: the ‘Martin’ mode and the ‘Malcolm’ mode. This representation feels like it attests to the necessity of both figures and their philosophies in the fight for civil rights and the fight for America’s future. And it demonstrates Baldwin’s personal and professional struggle, as well, as a man trying to present racism to..

…realistic nature and essentially human aspects of his art. Baldwin believes in Art’s utility, but will not sacrifice its authenticity for a quick and ready protest.

…writing as that of a protest novel, in which ideas are placed at the forefront more or less at the expense of the characters that carry forward the story and often unmistakably represent those ideas. Baldwin wants nothing more than his writing to have purpose and carry weight in the topics they address, such as the blight of racism on Americans’ souls, but he has no interest in these ideas overcoming the…

A continuation of the impressive accounting of Baldwin’s life and travels, set well in their context, but it may be a bit sluggish at times, with slogs of information that drill much deeper than the depth for which I’m prepared to pay attention.

I appreciate the conversation about the purpose of art from Baldwin’s perspective. I think it is most accessible in Baldwin’s chastising of Richard Wright’s…

…humanity. We are all imperfect representations of our ideas and feelings, which should instill a natural humility immediately in a person; a recognition of these facts can carry a man from a long ways off.

Baldwin’s witnessing turns from the black experience to the wide open witnessing of the American excitement with racism and its restitution in the Civil Rights era.

When Baldwin heads south, he meets MLK for the first time. Their messages of active love and profound pity harmonize with each other, but strife seems to sit below the surface as Baldwin, essentially openly gay at this point, feels hostility from MLK. In the bio, it’s not referenced as to why, but implied that it could be his sex orientation; this feels like an example of the universal presence of flaws in…

Love and safety conflict for Baldwin in Giovanni’s Room, and this theme supports a great deal of Baldwin’s understanding of race relations in the US as he approaches involvement with the civil rights movement

Baldwin’s insistence on remaining a distant witness to American racism, at least during his time in Paris, begins to catch up to the reality of the Civil Rights Movement; in ‘54, Brown v. Board of Ed sparks a fight for desegregation that brings to the forefront issues of American identity and race relations that Baldwin had been considering for many years on a more personal level. He feels a need to be there.

Personal love & authenticity come as antidotes to the natural inclination to react with anger & violence under the thumb of discrimination; they are Baldwin’s salvation just as much as his character’s in Go Tell It on the Mountain. They are also the opportunity to live in relative harmony & carry forward with a purpose that is not defined by race, only influenced by it, which appears to be salvation in itself.

…through his own experiences with the unforgiving circumstances of racial prejudice and poverty in Harlem in the Great Depression, and then beyond. Learning of some examples of his younger life in which he saw ample evidence for his father’s archetypical posturing are chilling; and it’s no wonder that the posturing of his father ultimately broke his father.

Also, Leeming’s writing is very accessible so far.

There’s usually a dichotomy of parents placed within their child. For Baldwin, he saw his father’s grasping toward respectability and traditional religious values as a black-man-in-a-white-world archetype; paradoxically, he saw tolerance and love in his mother, valued beyond circumstance, or as best as she could. His parents gave him a framework through which he worked, considering himself metaphorically,…