James Baldwin
James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison mirror the African-American
experience of the 1950s. Their characters suffer from a lack of
identity, rather than from over-ambition. Baldwin, the oldest of
nine children born to a Harlem, New York, family, was the foster
son of a minister. As a youth, Baldwin occasionally preached in
the church. This experience helped shape the compelling, oral
quality of Baldwin's prose, most clearly seen in his excellent
essays, such as "Letter from a Region Of My Mind," from the
collection The Fire Next Time (1963). In this, he argued
movingly
for an end to separation between the races.
Baldwin's first novel, the autobiographical Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953), is probably his best known. It is the story of a 14-year-old youth who seeks self-knowledge and religious faith as he wrestles with issues of Christian conversion in a storefront church. Other important Baldwin works include Another Country (1962), a novel about racial issues and homosexuality, and Nobody Knows My Name (1961), a collection of passionate personal essays about racism, the role of the artist, and literature.
