Let me add myself to the extremely long list of essayist who proclaim James Baldwin on of the best essayists of the 20th century. There are two books that every essayist should have on her shelf - The Art of the Personal Essay, edited by Phillip Lopate, and The Price of the Ticket, a full collection of the essays of James Baldwin. And if, like with other collections you have the propensity for skipping about and snatching an essay here or there to read, fight it. Read every single essay in this collection. It's a fat book. It will take you a while. You'll read and have to stop for days and absorb and come back and read more and stop and wonder and continue this process for a month or a year or however long it takes, but make your way through what is a startlingly clear look at the internal and the external makings of America in the 20th century. ( )

If They Take You In the Morning

I remember the first time I realized that James Baldwin was a genius. I was 18 years old with a single year of college under my belt. And, I was trapped in the thick of Midwestern humidity in an unairconditioned bedroom of a co-op. At this time, I was actually a research assistant for an Astrophysics professor within the Physics Department. I discovered that I loved physics and hated physicists.

So at 5pm everyday I would run accross the diag to the Graduate library and check out 7-10 books at a time. It never occurred to me, to pick up any Baldwin. I read Go Tell It on the Mountain in high school, foolishly I was not impressed. In those days, I was calling myself a revolutionary so I picked up one of Angela Davis's autobiographies. I found one of the most beautifully crafted letters ever exchanged from one writer to another.

Some of us white and black know how great a price has already been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people, an unprescedented nation. If we know, and do nothing, were are worse than the murderers hired in our name. If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own - which it is - and render impassible with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.

And with one five page letter, I fell in love.

I am certain that The Price of the Ticket must be one of the greatest collections of essays ever bound into a single volume. If someone would like to challenge that, please be my guest. And, I believe that James Baldwin is probably the second most widley quoted African American writer in epithets, speeches and dedications after Martin Luther King. I admit, I have no statistical data to support these claims. I have no quantitative proof. Just keep your eyes and ears open and you will understand what I mean. Whether it was the text Many Thousands Gone I read in An African History course on Slavery, or the article entitled The Price of the Ticket that I discovered in my Art History course. Baldwin has left an indelible mark on history.

James warned us that, "It is very nearly impossible, after all, to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind." (The Can't Turn Back) He proved to us that, "freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be." (Notes for a Hypothetical Novel) Long before Morrison & Cose explanation of the Envy of the World we knew, "alas, that to be an American Negro Male is also to be a kind of walking phallic symbol: which means that one pays, in one's own personality, for the sexual insecurity of others." (The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy) Before Mumia reminded us Baldwin informed us, "What passes for identity in America is a serise of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example that so many people really appear to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free." (A Talk to Teachers) And years later we still have not grasped the fact that, "Guilt is a luxury we can no longer afford." (Words of a Native Son) Perhaps Genovese was smiling when Baldwin wrote, "We won our Christianity, our faith, at the point of a gun, not because of the example afforded by white Christains, but in spite of it. It was very difficult to become a Christian if you were a black man on a slave ship, and the slave ship was called "The Good Ship Jesus."

Perhaps the scarriest thing that Baldwin has showed us, is how seldom things change.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent. Talent is not to be ignored. Dreams are to be followed, Challenges are to be faced and Art is to be created.

Love,

Lhea J

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