The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin

This Companion offers fresh insight into the art and politics of James Baldwin, one of the most important writers of the twentieth century.

Michele Elam (Edited by)

9781107618183, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 9 April 2015

274 pages, 6 b/w illus.
22.6 x 15 x 2 cm, 0.36 kg

'The Companion … addresses Baldwin's work in relation to his social and political contexts, as well as examining lesser-studied aspects of his oeuvre, including his collaborations, his poetry, and - best of all - his humour.' Rona Cran, The Times Literary Supplement

This Companion offers fresh insight into the art and politics of James Baldwin, one of the most important writers and provocative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Black, gay, and gifted, he was hailed as a 'spokesman for the race', although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. Individual essays examine his classic novels and nonfiction as well as his work across lesser-examined domains: poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy, and artistic collaboration. In doing so, The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin captures the power and influence of his work during the civil rights era as well as his relevance in the 'post-race' transnational twenty-first century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership, and country assume new urgency.

1. 'Closer to something unnameable': James Baldwin's art of the novel Jacqueline Goldsby
2. James Baldwin's poetics Meta Duewa Jones
3. Go tell it on the mountain: the sermonic in the works of James Baldwin Soyica Diggs Colbert
4. Paying dues and playing the blues: James Baldwin's existential jazz motif Radiclani Clytus
5. Baldwin's theatre E. Patrick Johnson
6. Baldwin's humor Danielle Heard
7. James Baldwin and Yoran Cazac's 'Child's Story for Adults' Nicholas Boggs
8. Baldwin's collaborations Brian Norman
9. Baldwin and black leadership Eric R. Edwards
10. 'As though a metaphor were tangible': James Baldwin and identity Aliyyah I. Abdur-Rahman
11. Baldwin and the occasion of love Christopher Freeburg
12. James Baldwin's FBI files as political biography Douglas Field
13. Domesticating James Baldwin's global imagination Magdalena J. Zaborowska.

Subject Areas: Gay & Lesbian studies [JFSK], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary theory [DSA]