James Baldwin Now

by Dwight McBride

Overview

One of the most prolific and influential African American writers, James Baldwin was for many a harbinger of hope, a man who traversed the genres of art-writing novels, essays, and poetry.
James Baldwin Now takes advantage of the latest interdisciplinary work to understand the complexity of Baldwin's vision and contributions without needing to name him as exclusively gay, expatriate, black, or activist. It was, in fact, Baldwin who said, "it is quite impossible to write a worthwhile novel about a Jew or a Gentile or a Homosexual, for people refuse . . . to function in so neat and one-dimensional a fashion." McBride has gathered a unique group of new scholars to interrogate Baldwin's life, his presence, and his political thought and work. James Baldwin Now finally addresses the man who spoke, and continues to speak, so eloquently to crucial issues of the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814756188
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	08/01/1999
Pages:	356
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Dwight A. McBride is President of The New School in New York City. Prior to his appointment at The New School, Dr. McBride was Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Emory University, where he also held the position of Asa Griggs Candler Professor of African American Studies, Distinguished Affiliated Professor of English, and Associated Faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. A leading scholar of race and literary studies, Dr. McBride's books include James Baldwin Now, Impossible Witnesses: Truth Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony, Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual African American Fiction, and A Melvin Dixon Critical Reader. His book Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Studies and was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction: "How Much Time Do You Want for Your Progress?" New Approaches to James Baldwin	1
Part I	Baldwin and Race
1	White Fantasies of Desire: Baldwin and the Racial Identities of Sexuality	13
2	Now More Than Ever: James Baldwin and the Critique of White Liberalism	56
3	Finding the Words: Baldwin, Race Consciousness, and Democratic Theory	75
Part II	Baldwin and Sexuality
4	Culture, Rhetoric, and Queer Identity: James Baldwin and the Identity Politics of Race and Sexuality	103
5	Of Mimicry and (Little Man Little) Man: Toward a Queersighted Theory of Black Childhood	122
6	Sexual Exiles: James Baldwin and Another Country	161
Part III	Baldwin and the Transatlantic
7	Baldwin's Cosmopolitan Loneliness	187
8	"Alas, Poor Richard!": Transatlantic Baldwin, the Politics of Forgetting, and the Project of Modernity	208
9	The Parvenu Baldwin and the Other Side of Redemption: Modernity, Race, Sexuality, and the Cold War	233
Part IV	Baldwin and Intertextuality
10	(Pro)Creating Imaginative Spaces and Other Queer Acts: Randall Kenan's A Visitation of Spirits and Its Revival of James Baldwin's Absent Black Gay Man in Giovanni's Room	265
11	"I'm Not Entirely What I Look Like": Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and the Hegemony of Vision; or, Jimmy's FBEye Blues	289
12	Life According to the Beat: James Baldwin, Bessie Smith, and the Perilous Sounds of Love	307
Part V	Baldwin and the Literary
13	The Discovery of What It Means to Be a Witness: James Baldwin's Dialectics of Difference	331
14	Selfhood and Strategy in Notes of a Native Son	360
15	Select Bibliography of Works by and on James Baldwin	393
	Contributors	411
	Index	415

What People are Saying About This

Jennifer DeVere Brody

This excellent volume conceives of Baldwin as a figure crucial to discussions of whiteness, sexuality, and globalization. The times are ripe for the valuable reconsideration of Baldwin that James Baldwin Now provides.
— George Washington University

From the Publisher

"This excellent volume conceives of Baldwin as a figure crucial to discussions of whiteness, sexuality, and globalization. The times are ripe for the valuable reconsideration of Baldwin that James Baldwin Now provides."

-Jennifer DeVere Brody,George Washington University

Editorial Reviews

"This excellent volume conceives of Baldwin as a figure crucial to discussions of whiteness, sexuality, and globalization. The times are ripe for the valuable reconsideration of Baldwin that James Baldwin Now provides."

Jennifer DeVere Brody

"This excellent volume conceives of Baldwin as a figure crucial to discussions of whiteness, sexuality, and globalization. The times are ripe for the valuable reconsideration of Baldwin that James Baldwin Now provides."

-Jennifer DeVere Brody,George Washington University

From the Publisher

American English scholars not only explore new ways of thinking about the prolific and influential African-American writer, but also open up new ways in which his work helps clarify many contemporary societal problems. In 14 essays they examine him in the context of race, sexuality, the transatlantic, intertexuality, and the literary. Many but not all center their discussion around a particular literary work. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews