What might James Baldwin say?
This week, writer, critic, activist, and literary icon James Baldwin would have celebrated his 86th birthday, a cause for reflection and tributes by those touched by his life and work. And what work it was. The Cross of Redemption (August 24, 2010, Pantheon Books), a forthcoming volume of Baldwin’s uncollected writings serves as another testament to the breadth of analysis and observation that he possessed and articulated with such clarity and power. Edited by writer Randall Kenan, the collection includes a mix of Baldwin’s essays, reviews, and public letters written between 1947 and 1985. In the book’s introduction, Kenan rightfully classifies Baldwin as a literary prodigy, one who successfully (both commercially and critically) used his talent to document, with unapologetic fervor, the twisted, complex, and often ugly world around him. His overarching theme, even as he also sought to assert, contextualize, unravel, and complicate his identities as gay, black, American, man, was simpl
