13 min.
James Baldwin
This author, essayist, playwright, poet, activist and wit used his work to challenge prejudice
“An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realise the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else can tell, what it is like to be alive.”– JAMES BALDWIN As a queer Black man born in America during the 1920s, James Baldwin experienced much hatred and discrimination. A novelist, essayist, playwright and poet, from the start he used writing to explore and challenge difficult themes, both personally and socially. His first novel, 1953’s Go Tell It On The Mountain, tackled both religion and his own troubled upbringing, while the second, 1956’s Giovanni’s Room, explored the taboo subject…
