James Baldwin is an important literary figure both for his
writing and for his civil rights work, the two of which were closely
related.
Baldwin wrote about two "taboo" subjects at the time: being
black and being homosexual. During a good portion of the 20th century these were not subjects
discussed in the open and Baldwin did so with a simple honesty that was his
trademark.
He left the United States as a young
man disillusioned with the double dose of prejudice he endured because of his race and sexual
orientation. Though he would return to America during the sixties and throw himself headlong
into the civil rights movement, he spent much of his life as an exile in
France.
"American history is longer, larger, more various,
more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it," he
said, and that about sums up his relationship with the world around him. As a writer, that is
the world he helped to expose, explore, destroy, and celebrate.
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