Books by James Baldwin

Never before available, the unexpurgated last interview with James Baldwin"I was not born to be what someone said I was. I was not born to be defined by someone else, but by myself, and myself only." When, in the fall of 1987, the poet Quincy Troupe traveled to the south of France to interview James Baldwin, Baldwin's brother David told him to ask Baldwin about everything-Baldwin was critically ill and David knew that this might be the writer's last chance to speak at length about his life and work.The result is one of the most eloquent and revelatory interviews of Baldwin's career, a conversation that ranges widely over such topics as his childhood in Harlem, his close friendship with Miles Davis, his relationship with writers like Toni Morrison and Richard Wright, his years in France, and his ever-incisive thoughts on the history of race relations and the African-American experience.Also collected here are significant interviews from other moments in Baldwin's life, including an in-depth interview conducted by Studs Terkel shortly after the publication of Nobody Knows My Name. These interviews showcase, above all, Baldwin's fearlessness and integrity as a writer, thinker, and individual, as well as the profound struggles he faced along the way.

Includes If Beale Street Could Talk, now a major motion picture directed by Barry Jenkins.The Library of America completes its edition of the collected fiction of the literary voice of the Civil Rights era with this volume gathering three revealing later works of the 1960s and '70s. With such landmark novels as Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni's Room, and the essay collections Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin established himself as the indispensable voice of the Civil Rights era, a figure whose prophetic exploration of the racial and sexual fissures in American society raised the consciousness of American readers. But by the late 1960s and '70s many regarded Baldwin as being out of sync with the political and social currents transforming America: too integrationist for Black Arts Movement writers and others on the Left, yet too "pessimistic" for many white readers, and as a result his later novels have never received the consideration given his earlier fiction. Sober in outlook but ambitious in scope, these works show Baldwin responding with his signature passion-for music, for justice, for life-and searching intelligence to the new realities of a rapidly changing cultural landscape, as the Movement era gives way to the age of identity politics that we still live in today. This culminating volume in the Library of America edition of his fiction illustrates how Baldwin continues to be relevant in twenty-first-century America, especially in his dramatizing of the unequal treatment of black men by the police and the justice system, his nuanced depictions of the black family, and his explorations of sexuality.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

'Few, it seems to me, have driven their words with such passion' GuardianHow our earliest experiences can shape our destiny is the theme that runs like a thread of revelation through these extraordinary stories. They explore the roots of love, of murder and of racial conflict, from the child in 'The Rockpile' who can never be forgiven by his God-fearing father for his illegitimacy to the loneliness of a young black girl in love with a white man who, she knows, will leave her in 'Come Out of the Wilderness' and the horrifying story of the initiation of a racist as a man remembers his parents taking him to see the mutilation and murder of a black man in 'Going to Meet the Man'. In them Baldwin unlocks the concepts of history and prejudice and probes beneath the skin to the soul.

The electrifying first novel from James Baldwin, whose life and words are immortalized in the Oscar-nominated film I Am Not Your Negro'I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal with my father.'Drawing on James Baldwin's own boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, his first novel tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the Fire Baptized, where the church swells with song and it is as if 'the Holy Ghost were riding on the air'. But he feels only scalding hatred for Gabriel, whose fear and fanaticism lead him to abuse his family. Johnny vows that, for him, things will be different. This blazing tale is full of passion and guilt, of secret sinners and prayers singing on the wind. 'A beautiful, enduring, spirtual song of a novel' Andrew O'Hagan'With vivid imagery, with lavish attention to details, Mr. Baldwin has told his feverish story' The New York Times

An engaging introduction to four of the greatest Americans George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln. Their lives are set forth in a simple manner, yet with many interesting details, and a glimpse is given of the trials and successes which combined to mold their character and afford such stirring examples for the youth of today. The stories are patriotic in every line, readable in every paragraph, and inspire the reader to the best thoughts and deeds. Ages 9 12.

Includes fifty legendary tales depicting certain romantic episodes in the lives of well known heroes and famous men, or in the history of a people. Children naturally take a deep interest in such stories. The reading of them will not only give pleasure but will lay the foundation for broader literary studies, as nearly all are the subjects of frequent allusions in poetry and prose. Ages 6 9.