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25 Jun / 2017Program by:
Featured: James BaldwinLanguage: English

Brilliant Skeptic

James Baldwin the Brilliant Skeptic

James Baldwin, arguably America’s greatest black writer, was a popular Pentecostal preacher in Harlem at age 14 — but at 17 he renounced religion as a sham.

Baldwin’s novels and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures thwarting the equitable integration not only of African Americans, but also of gay and bisexual men, while depicting some internalized obstacles to such individuals’ quests for acceptance.

“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.”

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