Where to Start Reading James Baldwin

One of Baldwin’s best known novels, often the first that readers discover; a classic of gay literature.

“I first read Giovanni’s Room in the Europe that James Baldwin decided to move to in 1948. He would later say that he left America in order to save his life; this novel is one of the ways he did so. … Baldwin’s second novel, and still one of my favorite books, Giovanni’s Room is about being someone else—or at least wanting to be. … Thoughtful and visceral, hopeful and tragic, fated yet filled with forethought, Giovanni’s Room is a jewel box of misery but also joy.” — Kevin Young, from his introduction.

This modern classic is a story of the Great Migration, fathers and sons, hopes and dreams, faith and coming-of-age.

“The young man at the heart of this novel, John Grimes, is trying to make sense of his place in the world, in the storefront church his family attends, and even in his own family … he carries the faith and optimism of youth, the belief that better things await despite so much evidence to the contrary. And this optimism is a feeling he has long held, since a teacher praised him for his intellectual gifts when he was five years old.” —Roxane Gay, from her introduction.

A timeless story of love, family and injustice; adapted into the acclaimed film of the same name by Barry Jenkins.

“…Beale Street is instead about the necessity of community in survival. … Black survival, Baldwin suggests, requires more than romantic love; it requires a more expansive love story. Early on in the novel, when Tish tells her family that she is pregnant, she braces for judgment but instead receives only joy. She feels her father’s hand on her belly and thinks, “That child in my belly was also, after all, his child, too, for there would have been no Tish if there had been no Joseph. Our laughter in that kitchen, then, was our helpless response to a miracle.” This is the miracle of If Beale Street Could Talk, one life nesting inside another, sheltering each other.” — Brit Bennett, from her introduction.

Baldwin’s novel about a jazz drummer and his circle was far ahead of it’s time, kicking off countless conversations about art, identity, and love. Gorgeous and provocative, Another Country was an immediate bestseller that still sings (and swings) today.

Critics were divided on this 1962 novel, but we like to think about something Baldwin said to The Paris Review in a 1984 interview: “I don’t try to be prophetic, as I don’t sit down to write literature. It is simply this: a writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, “I don’t look like that.” And Picasso replied, “You will.” And he was right.”

Four of Baldwin’s critically-acclaimed, bestselling essay collections in a single volume, with a terrific new introduction by Eddie S. Glaude. “[Baldwin] is an artist, a writer, in conversation with a wide range of influences (inheritances and ancestors) that shape what he sees and how he inhabits the genre.”

“To read Baldwin’s essays is to confront honestly and without flinching the country, the world, and oneself—and as the reader will see, that is no cakewalk. It seems to me that reading Baldwin, returning to him again and again, offers us an opportunity to engage in the soul craft his essays demand. We do so not as a narcissistic preoccupation apart from the world and its ugliness; we do so because we realize the world desperately needs better human beings, and that requires a willingness to confront the ugliness in us.” — Eddie S. Glaude, from his introduction.

A lively and accessible biography/critical look of one of America’s greatest writers; this is a must-read for readers of Baldwin’s work — and American history.

Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. took us behind the scenes of Begin Again on our podcast, Poured Over. Listen in as he riffs on needing to leave the U.S. in order to write about Baldwin (and why Baldwin came back from Paris); why we’re reaching for Baldwin now, more than three decades after his death; what Baldwin has to teach us about the intersection of memory, history, identity and race — and more. 

This remarkable book about the women who shaped Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin is celebratory, revelatory and surprising.

“This is not just for us to say, ‘How interesting’ now we know three more people, it’s for us to say, ‘What can we do now that we know their stories?’” On our Poured Over podcast, Anna Malaika Tubbs delves into her group biography The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. Anna joins us to talk about the importance of reclaiming Black women’s stories, motherhood and the lives women lead before they have children, the moments of joy she found writing this book, and much more.