Question

What does James Baldwin say about " the experience of a Black writer in America"?

Answer 1

James Arthur Baldwin was an american novelist, playwright, essayist,playwright,poet and activist.

He often depicted the brutal picture of race relations, but kept a strong belief of changing the world through his writing. He quoted the words "If we...do not falter in our duty now, we may be able to end the racial nightmare." These words were like a sword to the American people, and the book "The Fire Next Time " actually created a fire by becoming a best seller at that time .

  

In 1968 on his novel Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, he returned to more realistic themes — sexuality, family and the Black experience.

He was a writer of daring and dignity .
In his real life he experienced a tug-of-war
between two tough urges
- one craving for his African roots and the
other mourn over and rejoicing in its American legacy of insult and injury,of freedom and lack of possibility.
In 1950’s, a slave novel, Talking at the Gates in which he mentioned “to explore his belief that black and white in America were bound by strong ties, including blood ties"
It was a distortion of bonds, as opposed to actual differences, that fuelled the racial nightmare.
He cannot live without a past, but the black is stripped off his past in America. A person who forget his past can be considered as handicapped by an inferiority feeling. His soul may be haunted by rootless past. The fear of whites and their hates are collateral to life for the blacks.These are his words who encounterd a lot of hardship to buid his career and also to establish as writer rather than negro .In the hope that his words may cause a change...A change that is good for the future to uphold .