James Baldwin: A Biography

Buy James Baldwin: A Biography: David Adams Leeming,

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Henry Holt & Co (P)

Author: David Adams Leeming, £10.30
A MASTERFUL PORTRAIT OF AN ENIGMATIC GENIUS
Review date: 2005-11-02 Rating: 10 out of 10

His stepfather made fun of his eyes, and called him "the ugliest child he had ever seen." This was a two-pronged insult because James Baldwin had his mother's eyes.

As long as he lived, Baldwin would retell an incident related to that memory that he said changed the course of his life. When he was perhaps five or six-years-old, he was amazed to see on the street an old woman with large eyes and lips. He ran upstairs, called his mother to the window, and said, "You see? You see? She's uglier than you, Mama! She's uglier than me!"

The significant aspect of seeing that face on the street would take Baldwin many years to articulate. He learned that his physical appearance did not necessarily have an effect on what he would do in life, "that if his mother was ‘ugly," then even ugliness could be beautiful."

And this unattractive, intellectually precocious boy became the man who would write like no other, chronicling America in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. He gave us the novels "Go Tell It On The Mountain," "Giovanni's Room," and "Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone."

Baldwin used to say to white audiences, "I've been here for 350 years and you've never seen me." That sense of alienation is evoked in the titles of his collections of essays, "Nobody Knows My Name" and "No Name in the Street." Undoubtedly, students of sociology yet unborn will pore over these words to better understand America in the 20th century.

Other biographies have been written about James Baldwin - none as personal, revealing and poignant as this. David Leeming, Baldwin's associate for four years and friend for a quarter of a century has produced a masterful portrait of one of our country's most enigmatic geniuses.

- Gail Cooke

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