James Baldwin is one of my all time favorite writers, both as a novelist and an essayist. This slim handful of interviews is a very engaging introduction to his ideas and concerns, which continue to be as relevant today as they were when he was alive. ( )

What can you say about Uncle Jimmy? ( )

james baldwin was simply amazing. the first three interviews in this book show him as so deeply intelligent and well spoken; he manages in conversation to speak much better than most people could write, given all the time in the world to compose what they wanted to say. what a thoughtful, brilliant man.

the last interview is less so, but was (i think) not edited down that well and was done when he was dying and in pain, so is not as articulate or concise or cogent. i'm kind of ignoring this one and focusing on the others, which have so much to them, as short as they are.

makes me want to go back and read all his work.

"You go to white movies and, like everybody else, you fall in love with Joan Crawford, and you root for the Good Guys who are killing off the Indians. It comes as a great psychological collision when you realize all of these things are really metaphors for your oppression, and will lead into a kind of psychological warfare in which you may perish."

"All you are ever told in this country about being black is that it is a terrible, terrible thing to be. Now, in order to survive this, you have to really dig down into yourself and re-create yourself, really, according to no image which yet exists in America. You have to oppose, in fact - this may sound very strange - you have to decide who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you."

"It is one thing to demand justice in literature, and another thing to face the price that one has got to pay for it in life."

"At some point when I'm in this country, I always get to the place where I realize that I don't see it very clearly, because it is very exhausting - after all, you do spend twenty-four hours a day resisting and resenting it, trying to keep a kind of equilibrium in it - so that I suppose I'll keep going away and coming back."

"...the real terror that engulfs the white world now is a visceral terror....It's the terror of being described by those they've been describing for so long."

"Nobody really cares who goes to bed with whom, finally. I mean, the State doesn't really care, the Church doesn't really care. They care that you should be frightened of what you do. As long as you feel guilty about it, the State can rule you."

"I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, into a society in which they were supposed to be safe. The anomaly of their sexuality puts them in danger, unexpectedly. Their reaction seems to me in direct proportion to the sense of feeling cheated of the advantages which accrue to white people in a white society."

"There's nothing in me that is not in everybody else, and nothing in everybody else that is not in me."

"...you have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all." ( )

I love, love interviews with writers and I have read many. The Paris Review has a huge collection of their interviews with authors that are accessible for free on the internet. Having said that I found James Baldwin: The Last Interview: and other Conversations (The Last Interview Series) a big disappointment. Unfortunately he is amazingly inarticulate. Nonetheless I learn something from each interview but if they interest you I recommend you start with the Paris Review. ( )