The Divided Mind of James Baldwin

Abstract

Lionel Trilling once observed that there are certain individuals who contain the “ yes ” and “ no ” of their culture, whose personal ambivalences become paradigmatic. This would seem to be an apt description of a man whose first novel was published twenty-five years ago, a man whose career has described a neat and telling parabola and whose contradictions go to the heart of an issue which dominated the political and cultural life of mid-century America: James Baldwin. And it is perhaps not inappropriate to seize the occasion of this anniversary and of the publication of his new novel, Just Above My Head, to attempt a summation of a writer, once an articulate spokesman for black revolt, now living an expatriate existence in southern France.To date, Baldwin has written six novels: Go Tell it on the Mountain (1954), Giovanni's Room (1956), Another Country (1962), Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), Just Above My Head (1979); four books of essays: The Fire Next Time (1963), Nobody Knows My Name (1964), Notes of a Native Son (1964), No Name in the Street (1972); two plays: Blues for Mr. Charlie (1964), Amen Corner (1968); and one book of short stories: Going to Meet the Man (1965). Born in Harlem in 1924, he left in 1948 for France, driven out by despair of the racial situation. He returned in 1957 and in the heady days of the Civil Rights movement found himself a principal spokesman — his polemical essay, The Fire Next Time, appearing at a crucial moment in black/white relations. Outflanked by the events of the late sixties, he retreated again to Europe. His more recent novels have failed to spark the popular or critical interest of his earlier work.

Traces on the Blackboard: The Vestiges of Racism on the African American Psyche

“…In "The Divided Mind of James Baldwin" literary analyst C.W.E. Bigsby (1998) investigates the ways in which Baldwin's ruminations about racism reveal that the traces of racism in the psyche have sociogenic roots. According to Bigsby, African Americans, as portrayed in Baldwin's personal narrative and in the lives of his fictional characters, "[are] all too aware of the injunctions, written and unwritten, which spell out the limits of [their] freedom" (p.99, emphasis added).…”

“…This hoped for transformation was rooted in Baldwin's faith in the healing power of Christian love, which he believed could engender a new state of consciousness, a new Self within the individual (Bigsby, 1998). Moreover, in order to accomplish such an arduous task, the individual must "win a small psychic territory within which the harsh pragmatics of the public world no longer operate" (p.98).…”

The Paris Paradox: Colorblindness and Colonialism in African American Expatriate Fiction

“…At the center of this conflict is the role that African American celebrities such as Josephine Baker and Richard Wright play as mouthpieces of French colorblindness and therefore as accomplices in making French colonialism invisible. Scholars have described the relations between France and these personalities as "convenient francophilia" (Gondola 2004), a "mutually beneficial relationship" (Francis 2005), a seeming complicity "with the [French] nation-state at its most racist moment" (Keaton 2009), and "a moral myopia with regard to the French attitudes" toward their colonial subjects (Bigsby 1988).…”