When I read \u201cGoing to Meet the Man,\u201d I honestly found Jesse\u2019s character so disturbing that I didn\u2019t really want to think about why Baldwin chose to use the name \u201cGrace\u201d for the character of Jesse\u2019s wife. However, when Prof. Kinyon brought it up in class, it was helpful to start to think through some of the symbolism and consider what commentary Baldwin might be making. It was also helpful to try to make sense of why this story, which is primarily about racial violence, is in the unit about queer identity. Baldwin never chooses names carelessly, and there\u2019s a lot of meaning behind Grace\u2019s name in this story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my research for my senior thesis, I\u2019m reading a lot by theologian Mark Jordan, who studies sexuality, silence, and violence in Christianity. One of his insights is that the erotic is a privileged form of speech in how we talk about human relationships with God\u2014that is, it\u2019s some of the best language we have for describing intimacy between God and humans, as art like \u201cThe Ecstasy of Saint Teresa\u201d illustrates. Without a way of being honest about sexuality, of course our relationships with God and one another will be distorted, which all too often leads to violence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jordan\u2019s insight helped me make a bit more sense of \u201cGoing to Meet the Man.\u201d With a distorted understanding of sexuality, one based around violence and racism rather than love, how could Jesse possibly attain grace? As we started to discuss in class, Baldwin\u2019s work always circles back to trying to reclaim the Christian message of love. Viewing the story through this lens helps me understand how Grace\u2019s character might fit into the broader themes about love, sexuality, violence, and redemption that run through Baldwin\u2019s work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One question I still have after reading this story is, why would Baldwin choose Jesse as the main character\u2019s name? In the Bible, Jesse is an important part of Jesus\u2019 ancestry, the father of King David. It\u2019s safe to assume that Baldwin was well aware of Jesse\u2019s role in Christianity, so why would he give this name to such a despicable character? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I read \u201cGoing to Meet the Man,\u201d I honestly found Jesse\u2019s character so disturbing that I didn\u2019t really want to think about why Baldwin chose to use the name \u201cGrace\u201d for the character of Jesse\u2019s wife. However, when Prof. Kinyon brought it up in class, it was helpful to start to think through some … Continue reading No Grace<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3909,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[496464],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-going-to-meet-the-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3909"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":528,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions\/528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}