James Baldwin
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€23.99
"son of Harlem"
A01=Magdalena J. Zaborowska
activist
archives
Author_Magdalena J. Zaborowska
biography
blues
Category=DNB
Category=DNBL
culture
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
France
gender
influence
intellectual
Jews
private life
queer
sexuality
twentieth century
women
worldview
Product details
- ISBN 9780300262209
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 27 May 2025
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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An intimate portrait of James Baldwin, offering a new understanding of his life and works as seen through his close relationships and private life
“Baldwin authority Zaborowska’s gracefully impassioned biography. . . . A creatively conceived appreciation for a decorated life and its far-flung influences on race, queer culture, and art.”—Kirkus Reviews
James Baldwin (1924–1987) was a pivotal figure of the twentieth century, an influential author, intellectual, and activist who led a celebrated public life—and whose words and image and persona remain current in our culture. Baldwin’s many incarnations—“son of Harlem,” “Black icon,” “great twentieth-century writer,” “race man,” “prophet,” “witness”—have reemerged in the digital age as Baldwin’s work becomes a touchstone for a new generation. It is the private, vulnerable, and messier Baldwin—the man behind the prophet and the online meme—who is the focus of this book.
Magdalena J. Zaborowska draws on Baldwin’s archives and material legacy—from his unpublished papers to his books to his house in France—to offer a fresh look at the writer’s understated and obscured private life. Taking a cue from Baldwin’s own love of the blues, Zaborowska presents his biography as a series of tracks on a vinyl record, introducing, developing, and remixing the themes and relationships from his life. She recounts episodes from Baldwin’s troubled childhood, his struggles with sexuality and gender, his intimate relationships, and the overlooked influence of women, Jews, and queers on his writing. This Life Album revolves around Baldwin’s development of a unique worldview, “Black queer humanism,” premised on African diaspora aesthetics, resilience, joy, community, internationalism, activism, and justice.
“Baldwin authority Zaborowska’s gracefully impassioned biography. . . . A creatively conceived appreciation for a decorated life and its far-flung influences on race, queer culture, and art.”—Kirkus Reviews
James Baldwin (1924–1987) was a pivotal figure of the twentieth century, an influential author, intellectual, and activist who led a celebrated public life—and whose words and image and persona remain current in our culture. Baldwin’s many incarnations—“son of Harlem,” “Black icon,” “great twentieth-century writer,” “race man,” “prophet,” “witness”—have reemerged in the digital age as Baldwin’s work becomes a touchstone for a new generation. It is the private, vulnerable, and messier Baldwin—the man behind the prophet and the online meme—who is the focus of this book.
Magdalena J. Zaborowska draws on Baldwin’s archives and material legacy—from his unpublished papers to his books to his house in France—to offer a fresh look at the writer’s understated and obscured private life. Taking a cue from Baldwin’s own love of the blues, Zaborowska presents his biography as a series of tracks on a vinyl record, introducing, developing, and remixing the themes and relationships from his life. She recounts episodes from Baldwin’s troubled childhood, his struggles with sexuality and gender, his intimate relationships, and the overlooked influence of women, Jews, and queers on his writing. This Life Album revolves around Baldwin’s development of a unique worldview, “Black queer humanism,” premised on African diaspora aesthetics, resilience, joy, community, internationalism, activism, and justice.
Magdalena J. Zaborowska is professor and chair of the Department of American Culture and professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She is the author of several books, including Me and My House: James Baldwin’s Last Decade in France.
