#james baldwin

[rthko]

"In 1984, a few years before his death, James Baldwin explained to an interviewer from the Village Voice that queers could see the precarity of heterosexuality, even as straights kept it hidden from themselves. 'The so-called straight person is no safer than I am, really. The terrors that homosexuals go through in this society would not be so great if society itself did not go through so many terrors it doesn't want to admit.'

As Baldwin saw it, it is not simply that straight people are suffering and in denial about it, but that heterosexual misery expresses itself through the projection of terror onto the homosexual. One way to think about this is that homophobia is the outward expression of heterosexual misery; a kind of subconscious jealous rage against the gendered and sexual possibilities that lie beyond the violence and disappointments of straight culture."

-Jane Ward, The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

#jane ward #james baldwin

[jadenvargen]

free online james baldwin stories, essays, videos, and other resources

**edit

James baldwin online archive with his articles and photo archives.

---NOVELS---

Giovanni's room"When David meets the sensual Giovanni in a bohemian bar, he is swept into a passionate love affair. But his girlfriend's return to Paris destroys everything. Unable to admit to the truth, David pretends the liaison never happened - while Giovanni's life descends into tragedy. This book introduces love's fascinating possibilities and extremities."

Go Tell It On The Mountain"(...)Baldwin's first major work, a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves."

+bonus: film adaptation on youtube. (if you’re a giancarlo esposito fan, you’ll be delighted to see him in an early preacher role)

Another Country and Going to Meet the Man Another country: "James Baldwin's masterly story of desire, hatred and violence opens with the unforgettable character of Rufus Scott, a scavenging Harlem jazz musician adrift in New York. Self-destructive, bad and brilliant, he draws us into a Bohemian underworld pulsing with heat, music and sex, where desperate and dangerous characters betray, love and test each other to the limit." Going to meet the Man: " collection of eight short stories by American writer James Baldwin. The book, dedicated "for Beauford Delaney", covers many topics related to anti-Black racism in American society, as well as African-American–Jewish relations, childhood, the creative process, criminal justice, drug addiction, family relationships, jazz, lynching, sexuality, and white supremacy."

Just Above My Head"Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the homosexual passion of Giovanni's Room, and to the political fire that enflames his nonfiction work. Here, too, the story of gospel singer Arthur Hall and his family becomes both a journey into another country of the soul and senses--and a living contemporary history of black struggle in this land."

If Beale Street Could Talk"Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions-affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche."

also has a film adaptation by moonlight's barry jenkins

Tell Me How Long the Train's been gone At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo's loyalty. 

---ESSAYS---

Baldwin essay collection. Including most famously: notes of a native son, nobody knows my name, the fire next time, no name in the street, the devil finds work- baldwin on film

--DOCUMENTARIES--

Take this hammer, a tour of san Francisco.

Meeting the man

--DEBATES:--

Debate with Malcolm x, 1963 ( on integration, the nation of islam, and other topics. )

Debate with William Buckley, 1965. ( historic debate in america. )

Heavily moderated debate with Malcolm x, Charles Eric Lincoln, and Samuel Schyle 1961. (Primarily Malcolm X's debate on behalf of the nation of islam, with Baldwin giving occassional inputs.)

----

apart from themes obvious in the book's descriptions, a general heads up for themes of incest and sexual assault throughout his works.

#james baldwin #motivated by i think people here think it's harder to find resources and read than it actually is. so much stuff online! #motivation nr 2 wtf

[dwellsinparadise]

Pretend, for example, that you were born in Chicago and have never had the remotest desire to visit Hong Kong, which is only a name on a map for you; pretend that some convulsion, sometimes called accident, throws you into connection with a man or a woman who lives in Hong Kong; and that you fall in love. Hong Kong will immediately cease to be a name and become the center of your life. And you may never know how many people live in Hong Kong. But you will know that one man or one woman lives there without whom you cannot live. And this is how our lives are changed, and this is how we are redeemed.

What a journey this life is! Dependent, entirely, on things unseen. If your lover lives in Hong Kong and cannot get to Chicago, it will be necessary for you to go to Hong Kong. Perhaps you will spend your life there, and never see Chicago again. And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, airlines, earth quake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there. And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win.

—James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket

#james baldwin #philo thoughts

[thoughtportal]

#james baldwin #civil rights #civilized #war crimes #human rights

[raeiyyn]

thinking about this excerpt from giovanni's room as i lay in bed staring at the ceiling endlessly

#james baldwin #giovanni's room

[metamorphesque]

― James Baldwin, Just Above My Head

#quotes #literature #classic literature #james baldwin #summer #september

[mysharona1987]

James Baldwin, 1979.

#free palestine #books #israel #imperialism #palestine #ww2 #history #blm #James baldwin

[soracities]

"There may not be, you know, as much humanity in the world as one would like to see, but there is some. There's more than one would think. In any case, if you...if you break faith with what you know...that's a betrayal of many, many, many, many people. I may know six people, but that's enough. Love has never been a popular movement and no-one's ever wanted really to be free. The world is held together, really it is, held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person, you could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide in yourself not to be."

(Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (1970), dir. Terence Dixon)

#video #james baldwin #and you have to decide in yourself not to be #x

[jaaek]

#james baldwin

[saydesole]

Happy Black History 🤎

#black girl aesthetic #black girl blogger #pinterest #black girls of tumblr #black girl joy #black girl magic #black boy aesthetic #blck history #black history #black hair #black men #black women #harriet tubman #madam cj walker #donna summer #malcolm x #martin luther king jr #james baldwin #maya angelou #toni morrison #eartha kitt #teresa graves #nelsonmandela

[nerdygaymormon]

#black history month #queeeer chameleon #audre lorde #willi ninja #marsha p johnson #bayard rustin #stormé delarverie #james baldwin #justin fashanu #lady phyll #yasmin benoit #queer history

[sicknessinmotion]

LETTER TO MY CHILDHOOD ME

franz wright // richey edwards // unknown // katie maria // little women (2019) // james baldwin // unknown // siickangel (?)

#poetry #quotes #web weaving #webweaving #.w #words #excerpts #on childhood #franz wright #richey edwards #katie maria #james baldwin

[flowerytale]

James Baldwin, from Giovanni’s Room

#james baldwin #giovanni’s room #typo #typography #novel #lit #literature #american literature #fragments #*

[envydeath]

silence lay steadily.

things haunt, joshua jennifer espinoza // giovanni's room, james baldwin // through me (the flood), hozier // flowers in the attic, v.c. andrews // i am in eskew, jon ware // anatomy, kitty horrorshow // the haunting of hill house, shirley jackson

#web weaving #parallels #haunted houses #whatever walked there walked alone #hauntings #shirley jackson #the haunting of hill house #the haunting of hill house (1959) #horror #horror themes #haunted house #horror trope #mine #flowers in the attic #v.c. andrews #kitty horrorshow #james baldwin #hozier

[gravity-rainbow]

James Baldwin

#james baldwin #children

[macrolit]

Giveaw@y: We’re giving away 12 vintage paperback classics! Won’t these look lovely on your shelf? =) Enter to win these classics by: 1) following macrolit on Tumblr (yes, we will check. :P), and 2) reblogging this post. We will choose a random winner on 4 November 2023. Good luck!

Follow our IG account to be eligible for our IG giveaw@ys. For full rules to all of our giveaw@ys, click here

#giveaw@y #literature #old books #free books #agatha christie #ernest hemingway #james baldwin #fyodor dostoevsky #kurt vonnegut