Author: krusso

One of the themes I’ve noticed in the last few weeks of discussion and of blog posts is that of history. Prof. Kinyon asked us how we tell our history, specifically America’s story. I would like to use this framework when investigating how Baldwin might respond to this question. The past placed Baldwin in his present – one filled with racism, oppression, and injustice. Black folk have been sites of contention and victims of violence for many centuries. Racism has come in different forms, to varying degrees of visibility, but it has continued to exist. Baldwin wrestles with these ideas when crafting his identity as a black man during the Civil Rights era. He dislikes the way that history writes him and refuses “to bow down before that history” as it means “accept[ing] that history’s arrogant and unjust judgment of him” (Williams). Just as Baldwin re-writes himself in the cultural landscape of identity, he re-writes history to be a recipient of his opinion. He does this most explicitly in his letter to his nephew, which Elizabeth touched on within her blog entry. He tells his nephew, “It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and, in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity” (Baldwin, “A Letter to My Nephew”). He re-understands history for his nephew: it is not one prescriptive of shame, indignity, or disgrace. Although history has placed black people in a specific position, Baldwin refuses it take anything else. He will not succumb to the self-loathing and misfortune that white history would have him believe of himself. He reclaims the notion of history as Black when contextualizing his and his nephew’s present. He says, “We have not stopped trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other, none of us would have survived, and now you must survive because we love you and for the sake of your children and your children’s children” (Baldwin, “A Letter to My Nephew”). This is a form of empowering truth. Baldwin answers: we tell America’s story by telling the black story.

Upon reading last week’s blog entries and participating in this week’s discussion, it seems as if our collective admiration of James Baldwin is complicated by his lack of advocacy for Algerians living in France and his lack of understanding of double jeopardy for black women. We questioned whether Baldwin should be forgiven for his disregard of the marginalized while in France in addition to whether his blindspot for a black woman’s lived experience should in any way lessen the legitimacy of his message. I think these are perhaps the most significant discussions we’ve had all semester. For weeks, we’ve put Baldwin on a pedestal: his command of language, his profound delivery, his thorough understanding of a black man’s “cage of reality bequeathed at birth”. These are hard-earned principles that Baldwin must be applauded for. His negligence in other areas interrupts his message but doesn’t destroy it. He is worthy of admiration. Yet is also worthy of critique. It is something Prof. Kinyon has made clear: Baldwin was human. He was fallible, imperfect, ignorant. Even the most “perfect” and morally adept Civil Rights leader, namely Martin Luther King Jr., was imperfect. 

Something I’ve also had to remind myself most recently is Baldwin’s severe struggles with mental illness. The expectation we hold him to often disregard this reality. James Baldwin recurrently attempted suicide, even at the height of his fame and creative power. He wanted to escape a life in which he presumably had much to be proud of and feel meaningful because of. In my opinion, Baldwin’s desire for death must be included in the conversations had in his quest for life – a life he singlehandedly built himself. He re-wrote himself and the various identities he held. Even amidst re-defining himself with his own words, he didn’t feel worthy of another breath. He alluded to his proximity to death in an interview before his death in 1987. He says: “For every James Baldwin, there are a whole lot of corpses, a lot of people who went under” (Holiday). France was Baldwin’s escape until he realized that it was no such thing. Escape from a world in which a black man lived in a cage. A reality which Baldwin had to contend for and which I believe doesn’t excuse, but perhaps adds perspective to his losses. He attempted to save himself, to float above the water threatening to drown him. But to do so, he unintentionally saw others drown. He carried a heavy societally-sanctioned burden with his own intersectionality, and thus cannot be expected (now or then) to save us all.

I hope to continue my discussion from last week on Baldwin’s own biomythography (term intentionally borrowed from Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name), specifically with regard to the mythologization of James Baldwin today. Nearly 35 years after his death, Baldwin’s name and words are invoked as a source of inspiration for such movements as #BlackLivesMatter. Baldwin, beyond other civil rights figures or prominent black authors, is invoked most often. On Twitter alone, “The words ‘James Baldwin’ (1,708 tweets) appear more in the August 2016 archive than ‘Claudia Rankine’ (416), ‘Langston Hughes’ (281), ‘Assata Shakur’ (130), ‘Ta-Nehisi Coates’ (129), ‘Toni Morrison’ (72), ‘Teju Cole’ (55), ‘Richard Wright’ (50), ‘Ralph Ellison’ (49), and ‘Amiri Baraka’ (10) combined” (Walsh). Perhaps Baldwin’s hybridity as both an autor and activist resulted in such an admirable legacy, as his social criticism is given breath on new platforms, such as Twitter. The temporal disjunct between past – namely the civil rights movement and present – namely the BLM movement – is collapsed through and within James Baldwin. He bridges the gap, teaching us of the cyclical and incessant nature of racism in this country. Baldwin, although I believe might support BLM, would revolt against his own mythologization. Melanie Walsh, author of “The Mythology of James Baldwin on Twitter” writes: “Twitter users engage in collective acts of authorship under the auspices of Baldwin as a single literary avatar, creating a communal literary mythology based on Baldwin’s real life and words but also extending beyond him” (Walsh). Whether or not Baldwin intended for his voice to be borrowed and manipulated to support or dismiss certain movements is unclear, yet presumed as not. It raises another question as to who our voices belong to, especially when they are used by others after death. I believe this might anger Baldwin, that his voice is now owned, accessible, and used by the mass public as a means of activism. Would this further Baldwin’s dominant message of the Black man being a commodity owned by the Republic? 

I believe, however unintentional, Baldwin was indeed mythologized, as a ruse invoked in the context of the political and social upheaval we are facing today. His words, and thus his contribution to the world, are quoted (or misquoted) countless times in our media, legitimizing certain social justice movements and giving an eloquent voice to black rage, which Audre Lorde explicitly alluded to in her work “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding To Racism” (1981).

I would like to explore the use of biomythography prior to our discussion of the intersection of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. The concept of biomythography is intentionally borrowed from Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. It is a combination of myth, history, and biography in narrative format, often transcending conventions of said genres. I believe Baldwin, although much of his work predates Lorde’s, borrowed the conception of writing as self-discovery and claim. I argued this in my Richard Wright essay, in which I wrote that “Baldwin’s writing, thus, is effectively an act of personal salvation in the face of racism, homophobia, and condemnation,” in which he “sees identity as spectral and subjective, non-conforming to sanctions enforced by society.” Baldwin uses his criticism of Wright as staking a claim in his own conceptions of masculinity and identity and he does this out of personal need. He says the violence is gratuitous not because it is against women, but instead because it is an inaccurate portrayal of masculinity and is characteristic of the rage of castration. This is perhaps an issue misplaced or forgotten, yet telling of Baldwin’s primary thought in dealing with the racial divide. 

I believe Lorde does the same but perhaps takes it a step further. 

I read Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name last semester for a women’s writing course, and in much of our discussion, we explored how Lorde rewrites herself through the use of language and reflection. Most notably, how Lorde mythologizes the persona of “Audre” to adopt “Zami” which is incidentally, “a Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers”. The protagonist is robbed of the conception of identity (perhaps what Lorde felt), and thus must reclaim her sense of self. Considering Lorde was legally blind, her life is a multi-traversing sensory experience. Lorde uses a third-dimensional, sensual language as symbolic meaning. This language is not phallocentric, it is a place where women and power might coexist, and demands an engaged and active audience. Just as Lorde challenged her readers, she seems to have challenged Baldwin. 

Baldwin has a clear and objective focus on the black man’s struggle in America. He says: “But you don’t realize that in this republic the only real crime is to be a Black man?” To which Lorde responds: “No, I don’t realize that. I realize that the only crime is to be Black. I realize the only crime is to be Black, and that includes me too”. Lorde points out one of Baldwin’s neglected margins of oppression of which he did not identify: the black woman. Lorde brings this topic to the forefront for Baldwin, directly addressing how black men use violence against black women as a way to cope with society’s treatment. Baldwin seems to push back, noting how a black man must not be blamed “for the trap he is in,” to which Lorde again re-emphasizes her point, not of blame, but of necessary change. These are thoughts I hope to continue to explore in my final paper, so feel free to leave feedback!

Baldwin, as much as he is fighting against the depictions of race and masculinity in Native Son, is equally as concerned with their respective intersections of sexuality and spirituality.

Baldwin grew up as Bigger: “cold or black or hungry,” yet unlike Bigger has not “accepted a theology that denies him life” (Collected Essays 18). Despite the intersecting components of his identity (queer, black, expatriate, activist) facing extreme ridicule and shame, Baldwin advocates existing beyond these measures of diagnosed evil; he is not “sub-human” nor will “battle for his humanity according to those brutal criteria bequethed him at his birth” (Collected Essays 18). This is a radical act of self-love, one that confronts the reductive binarisms of popular culture and Christian morality. I’m very intrigued by this autonomy, as I believe it is evident in every one of his works, both fiction and criticism.

Baldwin is being told by various institutions (including the church) that his body and its varying components are sinful, vile, and ugly. He is expected to morph into expectations of blackness and sexuality, and if he can’t, accept his lack of humanity in an exhibition of self-loathing. He stakes a claim in his writing, for the complexity and subjectivity of the individual, rejecting the tormenting treatment of the black body in society. This becomes an act of personal salvation, as much as it is an act of rebellion. ‘The recognition of this complexity,’ he says, ‘is the signal of maturity; it marks the death of the child and the birth of the man” (Everybody’s Protest Novel).

I also suggest that this notion must be held if we are to assess and understand Baldwin’s work. Not only must we appreciate Baldwin as an amalgam of identities, but his writing as an act of self-assertion in the face of racism, homophobia, and condemnation.