Selected Essays
If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?
A Report From Occupied Territory.
Documentaries
James Baldwin: From Another Place. A film By Sedat Pakay.
Videos
In Conversation with Malcolm X. (Read transcript.)
In Conversation with Nikki Giovanni.
In Conversation with Maya Angelou.
In Conversation with Margaret Mead.
The Moral Responsibility of the Artist.
“I’m writing for people, baby.”
Baldwin on “The White Liberal.”
Interviewed by Mavis Nicholson.
Books About James Baldwin
Lawrie Balfour: The Evidence of Things Not Said: James Baldwin and the Promise of American Democracy.
Herb Boyd: Baldwin’s Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin.
James Campbell: Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin.
Jules Farber: James Baldwin: Escape from America, Exile in Provence.
Douglas Field:
- All Those Strangers: The Art and Lives of James Baldwin.
- A Historical Guide to James Baldwin (editor).
- James Baldwin.
Ernest L. Gibson III: Salvific Manhood: James Baldwin’s Novelization of Male Intimacy.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.: Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own.
David Leeming: James Baldwin: A Biography.
Susan J. McWilliams (editor): A Political Companion to James Baldwin.
Bill V. Mullen: James Baldwin: Living in Fire.
Sedat Pakay: James Baldwin in Turkey: Bearing Witness from Another Place.
Anna Malaika Tubbs: The Three Mothers: How the Mother’s of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation.
Joseph Vogel: James Baldwin and the 1980s: Witnessing the Reagan Era.
Magdalena J. Zaborowska: Me and My House: James Baldwin’s Last Decade in France.
Magdalena J. Zaborowska: James Baldwin’s Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile.
Articles
Ta-Nehisi Coates: Is James Baldwin America’s Greatest Essayist? His are some of the coldest American sentences ever written. But they’re about love.
Douglas Field: The Art And Lives of James Baldwin: An Interview with Douglas Field.
Aderson Francois: James Baldwin’s Ideas and Activism during the 1980s.
Holly Genovese: James Baldwin and The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual.
Harmony Holiday: A Dinner in France, 1973: Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, and a Very Young Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Langston Hughes: “James Baldwin writes down to nobody.” Read Langston Hughes’ 1958 Review of Notes of a Native Son. “He is trying very hard to write up to himself.”
Ashawnta Jackson: James Baldwin and the FBI: The author was monitored for his political activities, but also for being gay. The surveillance took a toll on him.
Peter L’Official: On Domesticity and Memory in James Baldwin and Becky Suss.
William J. Maxwell: A Look Inside James Baldwin’s 1,884 Page FBI File.
Bill V. Mullen: The Anti-Colonial Vision of James Baldwin’s Last Two Unfinished Works: Bill Mullen on The Welcome Table and No Papers for Muhammad.
Jack Parlett: “I do not like people whose principal aim is pleasure.” When James Baldwin Went to Fire Island.
By J. T. Roane: Salvific Manhood: A New Book about Male Intimacy in James Baldwin’s Novels.
Jake Rossen: James Baldwin’s Record Collection Is Now a 478-Track Spotify Playlist.
Phillip Luke Sinitiere: James Baldwin and the 1980s: A New Book on the Iconic Writer’s Last Decade.
Emily Temple: “Write a Sentence as Clean as a Bone” And Other Advice from James Baldwin.
Anna Malaika Tubbs: How the Mothers of MLK, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped America.
Dagmawi Woubshet:
- How James Baldwin’s Writings About Love Evolved: The author is best known for arguing that emotional connection could help heal America’s racial divides. But his 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk focused instead on the bonds that held black people together.
- The Imperfect Power of I Am Not Your Negro: Raoul Peck’s documentary brings to life James Baldwin’s urgent ideas about race in America, even if it leaves out a key aspect of the writer’s life and work: his sexuality.
Interviews
‘I Never Intended to Become an Essayist’.
Other Resources