Description
Baldwin on race is Baldwin on the white American psyche.... The Cross of Redemption becomes an absorbing portrait of Baldwin's time--and of him. --New York Review of Books
A revelation by an American literary master: a gathering of essays, articles, polemics, reviews, and interviews that have never before appeared in book form. James Baldwin was one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the past century, renowned for his fierce engagement with issues haunting our common history. In The Cross of Redemption we have Baldwin discoursing on, among other subjects, the possibility of an African-American president and what it might mean; the hypocrisy of American religious fundamentalism; the black church in America; the trials and tribulations of black nationalism; anti-Semitism; the blues and boxing; Russian literary masters; and the role of the writer in our society. Prophetic and bracing, The Cross of Redemption is a welcome and important addition to the works of a cosmopolitan and canonical American writer who still has much to teach us about race, democracy, and personal and national identity. As Michael Ondaatje has remarked, "If van Gogh was our nineteenth-century artist-saint, Baldwin was] our twentieth-century one."Author: James Baldwin
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 09/06/2011
Pages: 400
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.63lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.29w x 0.82d
ISBN13: 9780307275967
ISBN10: 0307275965
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Collections | American | African American & Black
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | African American & Black Studies
- Literary Criticism | American | African American & Black
About the Author
James Baldwin was born in 1924 and died in 1987. Among his more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction are Giovanni's Room, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, and The Fire Next Time.
Randall Kenan is the author of, among other books, the novel A Visitation of Spirits and the short story collection Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. He teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.