Contradictions and Actuality: a Contemporary Analysis of James Baldwin

James Baldwin is considered to be one of the most influential essayists in American history , and his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, is a masterpiece of American literature. His writings, touching on the subjects of racial issues, sexuality, gender, religion, and identity, are still relevant today as they were back in his days. Lamentably, his first novel is widely considered to be his best work; his later works were almost disregarded by the critics, particularly after feminist criticism came to the forefront in the 1970s and 1980s , and the appearing on the literary scene of African American women such as Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, whose post-modern approaches to literature and to the subject of racial relationships were going to reshape our way of thinking about them . In the changing atmosphere pervading the intellectual landscape during those years, Baldwin's realist, conservative styles of writing were almost anachronistic, and today's critics are divided in their evaluation of Baldwin as a novelist . But why and how is Baldwin still relevant today? Why did I Am Not Your Negro, a documentary based on his last unfinished work, come out as recently as 2016? Why do contemporary writers of the tenure of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jesmyn Ward draw so much inspiration and give explicit references to his works in theirs ? Why does the Black Lives Matter movement seem to be so closely related to the statements contained in his essays, written more than fifty years ago? To answer these questions, it is necessary to consider the contexts and backgrounds that shaped Baldwin as a writer, and also to analyze his works from contemporary perspectives. In the following chapters, I will try and answer the questions I have mentioned above. James Baldwin first essays, collected in Notes of a Native Son, are famous for the critiques directed to Harriet Beecher Stowe and Richard Wright. They also contain the young author's views on literature. In the first chapter I will analyze Baldwin's first and best known novel, Go tell It on the Mountain, through the lens of the literary criticism he expressed in his early essays. The analysis should help framing Baldwin works, his views on writing, and the possible differences between his fiction and his non-fiction. Baldwin's second novel, Giovanni's Room, represents a turning point in his literary career. In it, he parted from the racial issue to explore other topics, like homosexual relationships, in his literary quest to define human identities. In the second chapter I will try and apply Gay, Lesbian and Queer theory along with African American criticism to the novel, in an attempt to understand if and how the novel is relevant from contemporary perspectives. Finally, in the third chapter; after a brief analysis of Baldwin's most famous essay, The Fire Next Time, I will attempt a comparison between the author's non-fiction masterpiece and two works by contemporary writers, which are often contrasted with it: Tah-Nehisi Coates' Between The World and Me , and Jesmyn Ward's The Fire This Time . The two authors are amongst the most prized writers of their generation, and have been often associated with James Baldwin. I would like to find the connections and the influences in their works, as well as the differences that separate the present from the past.