Collected Essays

Alternate Titles

• Notes of a native son.
• Nobody knows my name.
• Fire next time.
• No name in the street.
• Devil finds work.

Description

Told with Baldwin's characteristically unflinching honesty, this collection of illuminating, deeply felt essays examines topics ranging from race relations in the United States to the role of the writer in society, and offers personal accounts of Richard Wright, Norman Mailer and other writers.

Description

Novelist, essayist, and public intellectual, James Baldwin was one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the postwar era, and one of the greatest African-American writers of this century. A self-described "transatlantic commuter" who spent much of his life in France, Baldwin joined a cosmopolitan sophistication to a fierce engagement with social issues. Here are the complete texts of his early landmark collections, Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name (1961), which established him as an essential intellectual voice of his time, fusing in unique fashion the personal, the literary, and the political. The classic The Fire Next Time (1963), perhaps the most influential of his writings, is his most penetrating analysis of America's racial divide, and an impassioned call to "end the racial nightmare...and change the history of the world." The later volumes No Name in the Street (1972) and The Devil Finds Work (1976) chart his continuing response to the social and political turbulence of his era. A further thirty-six essaysnine of them previously uncollected - include some of Baldwin's earliest published writings, as well as revealing later insights into the language of Shakespeare, the poetry of Langston Hughes, and the music of Earl Hines.

Subjects

Series Statement

• The library of America ;

Other Editions

• Collected EssaysHardcoverLibrary of America1998-01-01
• Nobody knows my nameDial Press1961-01-01
• Nobody knows my nameMichael Joseph1961-01-01
• Nobody knows my nameDell1962-01-01
• Nobody knows my nameDell Publishing Co., Inc.1963-01-01
• Nobody knows my nameDell Pub. Co.1963-01-01