Writers Who Inspire Us: The Influence of James Baldwin
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I first read James Baldwin in a short story class my first year of college. I wasn’t familiar with his work, but his short story Sonny’s Blues was on our list of story options and it sounded like a captivating story. I am a bit embarrassed to say that because of the lack of diversity and inclusivity in the books I was assigned while in school prior to college, I read Sonny’s Blues and shelved Baldwin once I was done. A few years ago when I was beginning to read more non-fiction with a focus on African-American studies I took a trip to my local bookstore and decided to pick up a copy of Notes of a Native Son. I had no idea that that small purchase would be such a life-altering one and that his work would continue to inspire me for years to come.
Upon reading Baldwin for the first time, it’s hard to believe that the bulk of his work was written and published prior to 1980. To repeat an overused phrase, his work is timely. It all feels too current in spite of the fact that they were written over 50 years ago, oftentimes running parallel to the political movement that were advocating for social change. As I read Notes of a Native Son for the first time, I found I was highlighting and writing in the margins significantly more than any other book I’d read. I immediately began to acquire more and more of his books to add to my little library. The more I read his work, the more I felt like “he gets it.” Which he did. Baldwin explored themes such as race, sexuality, and masculinity in his work, all of which he had personal experience with.
The eldest of nine children, Baldwin was raised in Harlem, New York by his mother and stepfather, a Baptist preacher. As he never knew his biological father, Baldwin referred to his stepfather as his father, a man who he described as being incredibly strict. Their relationship was strained as Baldwin felt his father was trying to improve his racist beliefs and ideologies on him. Although they both experienced racism, Baldwin found it difficult to hate white people, a hate he felt his father harbored. Their relationship is one that Baldwin explored in Notes of a Native Son. Through his writing about his childhood you get a glimpse into the instrumental and influential events in his life that would inform his decisions in his later life.
For Baldwin, writing was always something he loved doing, but was not motivated by his family or society to pursue. He instead chose to turn to the church and spent 3 years as a preacher, an experience that had an impact not only on his writing, but his views on Christianity, a theme that was a common thread throughout his work. The influence that religion and his time spent as a young minister had on his work is apparent in the way he strings his words together. It is like music. It reaches deep, almost as if you can feel his words. When reading his work, you feel the pain he felt. You feel the fear he felt, but you also feel the hope he felt. And it’s hard not to be inspired and moved by it. As he wrote about in The Fire Next Time, during the summer of 1938 when he turned 14 Baldwin underwent a religious crisis. He witnessed a change in many of his classmates and was afraid of where he would end up. As he wrote, he felt he had a choice of either joining the pimps and whores and racketeers on the Avenue or accessing his capabilities, of which he felt he had none. Writing was not something that he felt he could seriously pursue because of the conditioning from society that told him from the minute he was born that there would be things he could not accomplish.
But yet, Baldwin did accomplish a successful writing career and inspired so many, including myself to seek refuge in words and in truth and to share that truth. At a point in his youth Baldwin told his father that he could do anything a white boy could do and had every intention of proving it. And his father was fearful of that because he knew that Baldwin believed with every ounce of himself that he could and that by doing so he would be challenging what the path the world expected him to go down. That is something that stood out to me when I began to read his work and they’re words that I still find myself returning to. Unlike Baldwin, the adult figures in my life never tried to stop my creative endeavors, but as a woman of color there are limitations the world may attempt to place on me. Every time I pick up one of his books, I am reminded that just as he did, I can and should tell stories of my experience and those around me because they portray a facet of America that needs to be documented. Reading Baldwin showed me that there is a role for everyone in the fight for civil rights and constantly has me asking, what can I do, how can I get involved? His work did and continues to reaffirm that we need writers who openly discuss their experience being black or being a part of any minority group in America.
Baldwin’s work has not only inspired me in terms of what I want to seek out and write about, but it’s taught me a lot. As I have become acquainted with his work throughout the last few years I have realized just how much my education lacked when it came to reading and learning about the black experience. And how little it seems things have changed. It’s shameful to think of how little I actually knew about the civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement prior to reading his books. As my journey has continued with his books I have time and time again been reminded of just how ignorant I had been of the continued fight for rights and how far we still have to go. His work makes me want to put pen to paper and write about the world around me and my experiences.
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RECOMMENDED READING
The Fire Next Time
First published in 1963, The Fire Next Time consists of two “letters” written on the 100 year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the first of which is to his namesake nephew. In both letters he urges both white and black Americans to tackle racism and its legacy in the country. He ends his letter to his nephew with a standout line that perfectly expresses the state of the country and its refusal to tackle racism
“You know, and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon.”
Notes of a Native Son
This is Baldwin’s first collection of essays to be published and covers his upbringing in Harlem, African-Americans overseas, films, and protest novels.
If Beale Street Could Talk
A love story set in Harlem in the 1970s, it explores the love between a young African-American couple—Tish and Fonny and their two families and how that love and bond struggles to hold them together after Fonny is falsely accused of rape. This novel is unique in Baldwin’s work as it is the only one to be narrated by a woman and focuses exclusively on a black love story.
About Karla Mendez
Karla Mendez is a writer and artist based in Florida. She is obsessed with buying books at a faster pace than she can read. An avid journal keeper, her favorite part of the day is watching the sun rise as she writes. She is always happy to discuss books and films - find her on Instagram at @kmmendez
