by James Baldwin
In this stunningly personal document, James Baldwin remembers in vivid details the Harlem childhood that shaped his early consciousness and the later events that scored his heart with pain—the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his return to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face.
An essay in two parts. Part One is primarily a series of personal anecdotes upon which are imposed summary political analyses. The Algerian War and the Parisians' reaction to it, Camus's equivocation on the question of liberty for Algerians, Franco, and McCarthyism are all some of the subjects that Baldwin strings together in this rhetorical web of damnation of European and American politics. The moral rectitude that informs the exposition is unquestioned, yet for the most part the ideological discourse is either too abstract and facile or too obvious to impress. After a rhetorical flurry in which Western humanism is dammed as a lie, Part Two gives an account of Baldwin's experiences with and feelings about the prime movers of the civil-rights and black-power movements of the past decade. Interspersed with this is the story of a personal friend and former bodyguard who was accused of murder. Baldwin comments on his relationships with King, Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver, as well as the 1963 march on Washington, his abortive attempt to complete the screenplay for Malcolm's autobiography, Hollywood's coterie of civil-rights patrons and the "flower children."
Vintage Reprint
ISBN-13 978-0307275929
