The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings (Vintage International)
by James Baldwin
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A treasury of essays, articles, and reviews by the late author includes pieces that explore such topics as religious fundamentalism, Russian literature, and the possibility of an African-American president.Tags
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As with all I've read of James Baldwin, this volume of some of his previously uncollected writings is extraordinary for its insights, its wonderful use of the English language and its hard truths.
I wanted to read this book prior to seeing the documentary I Am Not Your Negro. This is a collection of essays written by Jame Baldwin throughout his life, and these showcase more than his great writing skills: he was a master of rhetoric and philosophical argument. This is a large collection and while it's worth reading, I strongly recommend the documentary in which these writings are featured and placed into historical context. The film also includes clips of Baldwin and I am impressed by how well he could think on his feet and make a rebuttal to intellectual arguments. Most writers prefer pen and paper because they're thoughtful and take time to construct their prose. Baldwin was a strong intellectual who could hold his own. This show more country didn't treat him or his contemporaries well, but Baldwin is certainly a national treasure. We should not only honor him, we should heed his advice and take his points to heart because even after all these years - his points are still true. show less
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120+ Works 41,816 Members
James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924, in New York. Baldwin's father was a pastor who subjected his children to poverty, abuse, and religious fanaticism. As a result, many of Baldwin's recurring themes, such as alienation and rejection, are attributable to his upbringing. Living the life of a starving artist, Baldwin went through numerous jobs, show more including dishwasher, office boy, factory worker, and waiter. In 1948, he moved to France, where much work originated. Baldwin published Go Tell It on the Mountain in 1953. A largely autobiographical work, it tells of the religious awakening of a fourteen-year-old. In addition to his childhood experiences, his experiences as a black man and a homosexual provided inspiration for such works as Giovanni's Room, Nobody Knows My Name, and Another Country. Baldwin holds a distinguished place in American history as one of the foremost writers of both black and gay literature. He was an active participant in the Civil Rights movement. Baldwin succumbed to cancer on December 1, 1987. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Original title
- The cross of redemption
- Original publication date
- 2010-08-24
- Dedication
- The Estate of James Baldwin would like to extend appreciation to Erroll McDonald, Randall Kenan, Lily Evans, Eileen Ahearn, Douglas Field, Rene Boatman, and Quentin Miller for bringing this collection to fruition.
- First words
- Mass culture and the creative artist: Someone once said to me that the people in general cannot bear very much reality.
A word from writer directly to reader: I suppose that it has always been difficult to be a writer.
From nationalism, colonialism, and the United States: Bobby Kennedy recently made me the soul-stirring promise that one day - thirty years, if I'm lucky - I can be President too.
Theater: The Negro in and out: It is a sad fact that I have rarely seen a Negro actor really well used on the American stage or screen, or on television.
Is A raisin in the sun a lemon in the dark?: Both Native Son and A Raisin in the Sun are flawed pieces of work, though this is clearly not the point of Mr. Algren's argument.
As much truth as one can bear: Since World War II, certain names in recent American literature - Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Faulkner - have acquired such weight and become so sacrosanct that they have been used as tou... (show all)chstones to reveal the understandable, but lamentable, inadequacy of the younger literary artists.
Geraldine Page: I have borrowed Kazan's director's notes for Sweet Bird of Youth, from its first rehearsal to opening night
From What's the Reason Why?: People bought Another Country in considerably larger numbers that I imagined they would.
The artist's struggle for integrity: I really don't like words like "artist" or "integrity" or "courage" or "nobility".
We can change the country: Before I say anything else, I have an announcement to make.
Why I stopped hating Shakespeare: Every writer in the English language, I should imagine, has at some point hated Shakespeare, has turned away from that monstrous achievement with a kind of sick envy.
The uses of the blues: The title "The Uses of the Blues" does not refer to music; I don't know anything about music.
What price freedom?: Part of the price that Americans have paid for delusion, part of what we have done to ourselves, was given to us in Dallas, Texas.
The white problem: I should say two things before I begin.
Black power: I first met Stokely Carmichael in the Deep South when he was just another nonviolent kid, marching and talking and getting his head whipped.
The price may be too high: As so often happens in this time and place, a real question, with important repercussions, is rendered nearly trivial by the terms in which the question is expressed.
The Nigger we invent: Mr. Baldwin. I would like to make a suggestion before I begin.
Speech from the Soledad Rally: I can't keep you very long, because the hall's going to close very soon, and I must tell you this: that I was very honored and very excited to be here, because of what I've heard and because of ... (show all)the feeling in the hall.
A challenge to bicentennial candidates: One grows up early on my street, and so I started looking for you around the time that I - and later my brothers - began selling shopping bags, shining shoes, scavenging for wood and co... (show all)al, scavenging, period.
The news from all the Northern cities is, to understand it, grim; the state of the union is catastrophic: I can scarcely believe that I first met Martin Luther King Jr. twenty-one years ago, in Atlanta.
Lorraine Hansberry at the summit: I must, now, for various reasons - some of which, I hope, will presently become apparent - do something which I have very deliberately never done before: sketch the famous Bobby Kennedy meeti... (show all)ng.
On language, race, and the black writer: Writers are obliged, at some point, to realize that they are involved in a language which they must change.
Of the sorrow songs: I will let the date stand: but it is a false date.
Black English: I shall begin by saying a very difficult thing.
This far and no further: It is hard to be clear in these matters: yet, I hazard that Society - with a capital S - is a direct result of the actual and moral options offered by the State.
On being white ... and others lies: The crisis of leadership in the white community is remarkable - and terrifying - because there is, in fact, no white community.
Blacks and Jews: He comes to collect the rent, so you know him in that role.
To crush a serpent: I was a young evangelist, preaching in Harlem and other black communities for about three years: "young" means adolescent.
The fight: Patterson vs. Liston: We, the writers - a word I am using in its most primitive sense - arrived in Chicago about the days before the baffling, bruising, an unbelievable two minutes and six seconds at Comiskey Park.
Sidney Poitier: The first time I met Sidney, I walked up to him at an airport.
Letters from a journey: I feel very strange and naked, but I guess that's good.
The International War Crimes Tribunal: My name is included among the members of Lord Russell's War Crimes Tribunal, and it is imperative, therefore, that I make my position clear.
Anti-Semitism and Black Power: We are in the hideous center of a mortal storm, which many of us saw coming.
An open letter to my sister Angela Y. Davis: One might have hoped that, by this hour, the very sight of chains on black flesh, or the very sight of chains, would be so intolerable a sight for the American people, and so unbea... (show all)rable a memory, that they would themselves spontaneously rise up and strike off the manacles.
A letter to prisoners: Artists and prisoners have more in common with each other than have the servants of the State.
The fire this time: Though I am not a religious or, more precisely, a churchgoing man, I, like all black Americans, come out of the church - the black church, for we were not allowed to be members of the white one.
The death of a prophet: On this same avenue down which he hurried now, he had once walked with his father on bright Sunday mornings and vibrant Sunday night. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Mass culture and the creative artist: The mass culture, in the meantime, can only reflect our chaos: and perhaps we had bette remember that this chaos contains life - and a great transforming energy.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)A word from writer directly to reader: For in the same way that the writer scarcely ever had a more uneasy time, he has never been needed more.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)From nationalism, colonialism, and the United States: Now, on whether or not we face these facts everything depends.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Theater: The Negro in and out: And he has a strange way with language, a beat which is entirely his, which may be controlled by the head, but which seems to be dictated from the guts.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Is A raisin in the sun a lemon in the dark?: If he has left behind him something of value, it is up to those of us who know what value is to make certain that that it is not entirely lost.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)As much truth as one can bear: The principal fact that we must now face, and that a handful of writers are trying to dramatize, is that the time has now come for us to turn our backs forever on the big two-hearted river.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Geraldine Page: As for the light which Gerry holds, may it burn long.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)From What's the Reason Why?: I am aiming at what Henry James called "perception at the pitch of passion".
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The artist's struggle for integrity: It is hard to begin to understand that the drift in American life towards chaos is masked by all these smiling faces and all these do-good efforts.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)We can change the country: We can change the government, and we will.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Why I stopped hating Shakespeare: ..., transfiguring force which lives in the soul of man, and to aspire to do his work so well that when the breath has left him, the people - all people! - who search in the rubble for a sign or a witness will be able to find him there.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The uses of the blues:
Good mornin'.
How are you?
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)What price freedom?: Nothing can save us - not all our money, nor all our bombs, nor all our guns - if we cannot achieve that long-, long-, long-delayed maturity.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The white problem: But I've tried to outline what I take to be some of the conditions four our survival.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Black power: ..., then we, the blacks, the most despised children of the great Western house, are simply forced, with both pride and despair, to remember that we come from a long line of runaway slaves who managed to survive without passports.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The price may be too high: What they are rejecting is not a people, but a doctrine, and their seeming separation may prove to be one of the few hopes of genuine union that we have ever had in this so dangerously divided house.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The Nigger we invent: They will publicize this sort of thing as a hate gathering and a hate meeting, when actually it could possibly be a historical meeting that whites and blacks could learn from.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Speech from the Soledad Rally: We're responsible to that, and if the people who rule us don't hear that voice, then something terrible will happen to us.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)A challenge to bicentennial candidates: ...: to face it, this present chaos, and help the country to face itself, and, for the sake of all our children, to change it.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The news from all the Northern cities is, to understand it, grim; the state of the union is catastrophic: For, what Martin saw on the mountaintop was a future beyond these shores, and an identity beyond this struggle.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Lorraine Hansberry at the summit: And then, we heard the thunder.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)On language, race, and the black writer: I say it: patience, and shuffle the cards.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Of the sorrow songs: Then, history becomes a garment we can wear, and share, and not a cloak in which to hide, and time becomes a friend.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Black English: But we are men.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)This far and no further: Then we, as society with a small s, might be enabled to reassume our real responsibilities for each other and for all our children and tear down those incarcerations which we have built for others and in which we strangle, daily, on our own vomit.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)On being white ... and others lies: It is a terrible paradox, but those who believed that they could control and define black people divested themselves of the power to control and define themselves.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Blacks and Jews: Nobody said any kind of rainbow was going to be formed without some thunderstorms.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)To crush a serpent: And love is where you find it.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The fight: Patterson vs. Liston: We started walking through the crowds, and A. J. Liebling, behind us, tapped me on the shoulder and we went off to a bar, to mourn the very possible death of boxing, and to have a drink, with love, for Floyd.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Sidney Poitier: Well, that fact says a great deal more about this country than it says about black actors, or Sidney, or me.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Letters from a journey: I'm always afraid, and I'm pregnant with some strange monster.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The International War Crimes Tribunal: I think that mankind can do better that that, and I wish to be a witness to this small and stubborn possibility.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Anti-Semitism and Black Power: Or do they want us, after all, carefully manipulating the color black, merely to become white?
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)An open letter to my sister Angela Y. Davis: Therefore: peace.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)A letter to prisoners: We are in ourselves much older than any witness to Carthage or Pompeii and, having been through auction, flood, and fire, to say nothing of the spectacular excavation of our names, are not destined for the rubble.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The fire this time: Yours in the faith.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The death of a prophet: He watched it move slowly across the sky, impossible, eternal, burning, like God hanging over the world. - Blurbers
- Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.; Wideman, John Edgar
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Literature Studies and Criticism
- DDC/MDS
- 818.54 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American miscellaneous writings in English 20th Century 1945-1999
- LCC
- PS3552 .A45 .C76 — Language and Literature American literature American literature Individual authors 1961-
- BISAC
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- Reviews
- 2
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- (4.39)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 2
