James Baldwin Books To Celebrate The Influential Author’s Birthday

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When writer James Baldwin was just 24 and with only $40 in his pocket, he moved to Paris and finished “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” his first published novel. The writer would spend a good deal of his life living abroad, but his work remained distinctly American, confronting and examining the pain and difficulties of Black Americans.
Baldwin, whose other works include “Giovanni’s Room” and “If Beale Street Could Talk,” helped raise awareness in the Civil Rights Movement, racial discrimination in America, and sexual oppression through his writing and speeches. Born Aug. 2, 1924, during the Harlem Renaissance, Baldwin became well known for his deeply felt and intimate writing that captured his own experiences within a broader American context, challenging the country to deliver on its promise of equality, justice and happiness for all.
As an award-winning essayist, novelist, and writer of plays and poems, his direct, eloquent and philosophical writing routinely dealt with the topics of race, masculinity, sexuality and class. Even after his death from stomach cancer in 1987, Baldwin’s words still have the power to evoke a searing portrait not of what America pretended to be, but of what it truly was for Black men, Black women and marginalized communities.
On the 100-year anniversary of Baldwin’s birth, celebrate his legacy by reading one or more of his books, including those you might not be most familiar with, from the list ahead.
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