Reading the 20th Century discussion

One hundred years ago, on 2 August, the man who would go on to be one of America’s most important writers and civil rights activists was born in Harlem hospital in New York. In this landmark year, tributes have included everything from reissues of the author’s work to Baldwin-themed jazz concerts.

Tom Jenks, author of a new book about Baldwin’s short story Sonny’s Blues, thinks the author’s enduring appeal is “because of the depth of his understanding, his sympathy, and the lyric perfection of his art”. He “possessed a totality of gifts, as a writer and a man, and he bestowed his gifts – not least of all his love – for the sake of humankind,” Jenks writes.

“I think Baldwin is the essential voice when it comes to history and the struggles we’re having around history at the moment,” historian David Olusoga told the Hay festival audience during an event celebrating this centenary year in May (and still available to watch online via the festival’s Hay Festival Anytime feature). “What Baldwin railed against most was white America’s determination to brutally defend its own innocence.”

The Library of America’s box set edition of Baldwin’s work, edited by Toni Morrison and Darryl Pinckney, is “still a delight to read”, novelist Colm Tóibín said during the Hay event. Baldwin’s essays, though he is writing about the civil rights movement of the past, don’t feel dated, “because it’s a mind at work with a glittering tone in his possession”, Tóibín added.

“He is in some ways ‘clippable’, as we’d say now,” Olusoga said. In Baldwin’s appearances on chatshows, which can be found online, “he’s put in positions where he’s asked the sort of questions that Black people feel crushed by: ‘Prove to me race is a problem.’ ‘Why are you always talking about race?’ And he says what you wish you would say under that pressure. He says it beautifully and searingly.”

Olusoga thinks “one of the reasons why Baldwin is having this second life, one of the reasons his words were graffitied on buildings in 2020 during Black Lives Matter, is because he is perfectly suited not just for his age, but for the YouTube age.”