During my university student days, I embarked on the venture of trying to read every published novel of James Baldwin. Those were the days of civil rights marches in the USA, demonstrations on colleges campuses, Martin Luther King, the war in Vietnam, and political unrest. I managed to read a selection of Baldwin’s novels, including Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Going to Meet the Man, and The Fire Next Time. Added to this were several of Baldwin’s early essays, including Notes of a Native Son and Nobody Knows My Name.
Baldwin was one of the “essential intellectual voices of his time.” He wrote from his own experiences and was, in the words of one commentator, “one of the most brilliant and provocative, and one of the greatest African-American writers of the 20th century.” Of course, Baldwin did not stop writing when I had completed my studies; he went on to write quite prolifically, as well as address forums and make media appearances. He told stories from his personal experiences, the events of his times, the structures of his society. Some of these stories made it into publication and have joined his earlier works in a three-volume publication by The Library of Congress. This set is now available through Amazon.
One powerful story from his later years was If Beale Street Could Talk, from which was made an intimate, yet powerful, movie. Baldwin’s I Am Not Your Negro was not made into a typical movie, indeed, it was not a typical essay or novel. The book under review contains extracts from writings that James Baldwin penned about three of his friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Baldwin’s aim was to tell the “story of America through the lives of these three friends”, each of whom was murdered for, amongst other reasons, their beliefs and strength to act on them.
Baldwin died before he could complete a book from his notes on the above. It remained for Raoul Peck to imagine and put into print the book that Baldwin never wrote. Peck combined his own experiences and reflections on political and cultural mythology with those of James Baldwin. Peck put Baldwin’s notes into order, gave them categories and, therefore, prominence and power. As Peck himself says, Baldwin enabled him to connect the dots, provided him with the ammunition, the words, the voice, and the rhetoric, to say something about his own Haitian story as well as that of the modern USA and its legacy of slavery.
Peck has melded Baldwin’s notes into a framework, a form, a script that tells a coherent story, always seeking to remain true to Baldwin’s words and work. The chapters of the book are short, their headings usually of one word, their effect is to present James Baldwin as a modern-day prophet. History does not stop, it happens. We carry history with us, and some of us, those with the will and strength of a James Baldwin, help to explain it.
I look forward to viewing, and reviewing, the movie that Raoul Peck made from the notes of this American native son. In the meantime, the book is an easy read, well worth the effort to read, and valuable in its narrative essence. Read it and understand.
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