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This coming Tuesday, August 2, marks the 92nd birthday of one of the greatest authors of the 20th century, James Arthur Baldwin.
It’s impossible for me to convey what Mr. Baldwin’s example and legacy means to me personally.
Since I first read his 3rd published novel, Another Country, my book of “marching orders,” not a day has gone by that I have not thought of his example as laid forth in one of his novels, short stories and/or his essays, most of which have been collected into several volumes that could easily be the primer on how to essai (in the Montaignian sense); a series of “trials” and a “weighing” on what it means to be a gay black man in America.
Volumes have been written on James Baldwin’s contributions to literature, black civil rights, and gay identity. I’ve read most of them. For example, it was in my early reading of Baldwin criticism that I was first introduced to 19th century American author Henry James and got so tired of reading about the James-Baldwin connection that I finally began to pick up the author known as “The Master” and began reading him and enjoying this most prolific member of America’s most intellectual family.
One of the primary points of my identification with Baldwin was his background in The Black Church. In fact, prior to writing, Baldwin was a teacher from the ages 14-17 before leaving the church. The church, spirituality, and morality was central to many of Baldwin’s writings. including his first novel, Go Tell It On the Mountain, the essay Notes of a Native Son, his book-length essay The Fire Next Time, and Just Above My Head, his final published novel. In his book of collected essays, The Price of the Ticket, Baldwin conceded that he probably had never truly left the pulpit but, instead, found a pulpit of his own.
Over time, I learned to be careful in not imagining Baldwin’s church and religious experiences as my own. I never entered the pulpit to preach; indeed, beginning at the age of nine, I began to find that much of what was written in The Bible simply didn’t seem logical to me. While Baldwin reacted to his burgeoning adolescence by immersing himself in the church, I left all churches and, more or less never returned, quite frustrated by my inability to believe what I was being taught and resentful at having been denied the experience of receiving the Holy Ghost (which Baldwin wrote about so eloquently in Go Tell It On the Mountain and The Fire Next Time).
Mr. Baldwin taught me that maybe I needed to essai, or weigh, my church experiences and to “take what I need and leave the rest.”
As I was reading The Price of the Ticket, I came across Baldwin’s much underestimated survey of the movies and popular culture, The Devil Finds Work, and I ran across a couple of passages that reminded me why my own engagement with and appreciation of James Baldwin is so...personal.
“So here, now, was Bette Davis, on that Saturday afternoon, in close-up, over a champagne glass, pop-eyes popping. I was astounded. I had caught my father, not in a lie, but in an infirmity. For there, before me, after all, was a movie star: white: and if she was white and a movie star, she was rich: and she was ugly.” The Devil Finds Work
For as long as I can remember, I considered myself to be ugly. Unlike Baldwin, I don’t recall family members ever actually saying this (with the possible exception of remarks where family members would say that I was “such a beautiful baby”). I think that I heard some of this in school; remember that these were the times after “Black is Beautiful” became popularized, so, unlike Baldwin, perhaps, I never thought that I was ugly because I was black. I was, like Baldwin, quite effeminate even as a kid so I will concede the possibility that even though grew up knowing damn well that “black is beautiful” even if I wasn’t (for whatever reason).
It was something that I dared not talk about much. I preferred looking at the ground when talking to people as opposed to looking at the person because I was ashamed of how I looked.
Within society, generally, and in the LGBT community, specifically, many of us know of rigorous “lookism” and beauty standards. Some of us may (or may not) have been tyrannized by those standards.
Just as Mr. Baldwin saw a “movie star” that was “rich” and “ugly,” whatever else I may have thought of my looks then (and now, quite frankly) that did not have to be a barrier to me. Perhaps I learned from Mr. Baldwin what he seems to have earned from Bette Davis. To my mind, no one ever wrote so beautifully about feeling ugly as James Baldwin.
Which brings me to my second quote from The Devil Find Work:
“For, I was not only considered by my father to be ugly. I was considered by everyone to be “strange,” including my poor mother, who didn’t, however, beat me for it. Well, If I was “strange”---and i knew that I must be, otherwise people would not have treated me so strangely, and I would not have been so miserable—perhaps I could find a way to use my strangeness. A “strange” child, anyway, dimly and fearfully apprehends that the years are not likely to make him less strange. Therefore, if he wishes to live, he must calculate, and I knew that I had to live.”
A conversation I had with either my Mom (or maybe my stepdad) when I was around nine or ten years old:
ME: Mom, leave me alone, I’m just eccentric.
MOM: Boy, you ain’t eccentric; only rich people are eccentric, you’re just weird.
I’ve never exactly known why I was considered to be “weird” or “strange.” True enough, I have always liked to read...but so do many of my family members. I still have some troubles being orally articulate (and that may have had something to do with my feeling of being ugliness) I generally, don’t like “to play” with others; I prefer doing a lot of things alone.
And, sure enough, like Baldwin, I know that the years have not made me any less “strange” (even if I can fake being “normal” sometimes.
Gradually I have learned, curiously enough, to rely on one of my favorite Bible verses:
I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. Psalm 139:14
Mr. James Arthur Baldwin of Harlem, New York, was (and still is) the man that taught me that no matter the color of my skin, who I slept with, the swish in my walk, how I looked, or how “strange” I was, that I am fearfully and wonderfully made in accordance with what The Universe needs (for some reason) and that there is nothing that I can do about it.
I am so grateful that he taught me that.
Happy Birthday, Mr. Jimmy.