Modern

James Baldwin

1924–1987

Essayist who would not look away

Not everything that is faced can be changed is a writer’s ethic and a citizen’s. He left Harlem for Paris and then kept writing as if the American sentence were his responsibility. The essays are the evidence that it was.

In the canon

  1. Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.As Much Truth as One Can Bear
  2. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.The Fire Next Time

All voices