Baldwin I

But to quote James Baldwin, “I can’t afford despair.”

One hears throughout continual echoes of James Baldwin: “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

In the caption, she recalled telling Baldwin, "I am here, I love you, and I’m going to take care of you," when he told her about the incident and said that she still expresses the same sentiment to her husband today.

To compound the insult, when I met Baldwin, I more or less liked him.

“As much as anybody,” he says, “when I think about how I learned to write, who I mimicked, the voice that always comes to mind the most is James Baldwin. I didn’t have his talent, but the sort of searing honesty and generosity of spirit, and that ironic sense of being able to look at things, squarely, and yet still have compassion for even people whom he obviously disdained, or distrusted, or was angry with. His books all had a big impact on me.”