The article isn't about the video, but I'd advise watching the video.
The fire this time – the legacy of James Baldwin, by Lanre Bakare (The Guardian)
His work fell foul of civil-rights-era binary racial and sexual politics but, as a new film shows, now Baldwin’s ideas are used to explain everything from Trump to Black Lives Matter
... For Baldwin scholar, professor of English at Yale and author Caryl Phillips, the return of Baldwin to mainstream thinking isn’t surprising at all. For him the big issues concerning American life now – the rise of crude, racially charged politics, killings of unarmed black men by the police, an apathetic public – repeat a history from which Baldwin’s critiques still offer some solace. “People are looking for someone who can articulate these issues,” says Phillips. “I think the person who has probably articulated what it means to be an American and what it means to be black, with more eloquence than anybody else in the last century, is Baldwin.”
Thanks for posting this article and video about James Baldwin. He is one of our country's most gifted, important and overlooked writers. I hope, thanks to your post, more people will educate themselves about him and seek out his works.
ReplyDeleteCourtney