Author : Clarence E. Hardy
Genre : African Americans
Publisher : Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN : 1572332301
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 176 page
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"James Baldwin's relationship with black Christianity, and especially his rejection of it, exposes the anatomy of a religious heritage that has not been wrestled with sufficiently in black theological and religious studies. In James Baldwin's God: Sex, Hope, and Crisis in Black Holiness Culture, Clarence Hardy demonstrates that Baldwin is important not only for the ways he is connected to black religious culture, but also for the ways he chooses to disconnect himself from it. Despite Baldwin's view that black religious expression harbors a sensibility that is often vengeful and that its actual content is composed of illusory promises and empty theatrics, he remains captive to its energies, rhythms, languages, and themes. Baldwin is forced, on occasion, to acknowledge that the religious fervor he saw as an adolescent was not simply an expression of repressed sexual tension but also a sign of the irrepressible vigor and dignified humanity of black life." "In one of his later extended essays, James Baldwin remembered how his stepfather, David Baldwin, a one-time Baptist minister, died because of his "unreciprocated love for the Great God Almighty," James Baldwin's God engages most directly those aspects of Baldwin's work that address the substance and character of this unrequited love for a Christian God that is depicted as both silent before black suffering and as white - i.e., actively opposed to the flourishing of black life. Despite his consistent portrayal of a black holiness culture full of energy and passion, Baldwin implicitly condemns the fact that the principal backdrop to black people's conversion to Christianity in the United States is shame and not hope. Hardy's reading of Baldwin's texts, with its goal of understanding Baldwin's attitude toward a religion that revolves around an uncaring God in the face of black suffering, provides provocative reading for scholars of religion, literature, and history."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Author : Trudier Harris
Genre : Social Science
Publisher : Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN : 0870495348
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 244 page
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In James Baldwin's fiction, according to Trudier Harris, black women are conceptually limited figures until their author ceases to measure them by standards of the community fundamentalist church. Harris analyzes works written over a thirty-year period to show how Baldwin's development of female character progresses through time. Black women in the early fiction, responding to their elders as well as to religious influences, see their lives in terms of duty as wives, mothers, sisters, and lovers. Failure in any of these roles leads to guilt feelings and the expectation of damnation. In later works, Baldwin adopts a new point of view, acknowledging complex extenuating circumstances in lieu of pronouncing moral judgement. Female characters in works written at this stage eventually come to believe that the church affords no comfort. Baldwin subsequently makes villains of some female churchgoers, and caring women who do not attend church become his most attractive characters. Still later in Baldwin's career, a woman who frees herself of guilt by moving completely beyond the church attains greater contentment than almost all of her counterparts in the earlier works.

Author : Carol E. Henderson
Genre : African American churches
Publisher : Peter Lang
ISBN : 0820481580
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 186 page
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The publication of James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain ushered in a new age of the urban telling of a tale twice told yet rarely expressed in such vivid portraits. Go Tell It unveils the struggle of man with his God and that of man with himself. Baldwin's intense scrutiny of the spiritual and communal customs that serve as moral centers of the black community directs attention to the striking incongruities of religious fundamentalism and oppression. This book examines these multiple impulses, challenging the widely held convention that politics and religion do not mix.

Author : Daniel Quentin Miller
Genre : Literary Criticism
Publisher : Temple University Press
ISBN : 1566397375
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 284 page
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This new collection of essays presents a critical reappraisal of James Baldwin's work, looking beyond the commercial and critical success of some of Baldwin's early writings such as Go Tell it on the Mountain and Notes of a Native Son. Focusing on Baldwin's critically undervalued early works and the virtually neglected later ones, the contributors illuminate little-known aspects of this daring author's work and highlight his accomplishments as an experimental writer. Attentive to his innovations in style and form, Things Not Seen reveals an author who continually challenged cultural norms and tackled matters of social justice, sexuality, and racial identity. As volume editor D. Quentin Miller notes, "what has been lost is a complete portrait of [Baldwin's] tremendously rich intellectual journey that illustrates the direction of African-American thought and culture in the late twentieth century." This is an important book for anyone interested in Baldwin's work. It will engage readers interested in literature and African-American Studies. Author note: D. Quentin Miller is Assistant Professor of English at Gustavus Adolphus College, Saint Peter, MN.

Author : Marc Dudley
Genre : Literary Criticism
Publisher : Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN : 9781611179651
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 160 page
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The Harlem-born son of a storefront preacher, James Baldwin died almost thirty years ago, but his spirit lives on in the eloquent and still-relevant musings of his novels, short stories, essays, and poems. What concerned him most—as a black man, as a gay man, as an American—were notions of isolation and disconnection at both the individual and communal level and a conviction that only in the transformative power of love could humanity find any hope of healing its spiritual and social wounds. In Understanding James Baldwin, Marc K. Dudley shows that a proper grasp of Baldwin's work begins with a grasp of the times in which he wrote. During a career spanning the civil rights movement and beyond, Baldwin stood at the heart of intellectual and political debate, writing about race, sexual identity, and gendered politics, while traveling the world to promote dialogue on those issues. In surveying the writer's life, Dudley traces the shift in Baldwin's aspirations from occupying the pulpit like his stepfather to becoming a writer amid the turmoil of sexual self-discovery and the harsh realities of American racism and homophobia. The book's analyses of key works in the Baldwin canon—among them, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni's Room, "Sonny's Blues," Another Country, The Fire Next Time, and The Devil Finds Work—demonstrate the consistency, contrary to some critics' claims, of Baldwin's vision and thematic concerns. As police violence against people of color, a resurgence in white supremacist rhetoric, and pushback against LGBTQ rights fill today's headlines, James Baldwin's powerful and often-angry words find a new resonance. From early on, Baldwin decried the damning potential of alienation and the persistent bigotry that feeds it. Yet, even as it sometimes wavered, his hope for both the individual and the nation remained intact. In the present historical moment, James Baldwin matters more than ever.

Author : Lynn O. Scott
Genre : Literary Criticism
Publisher : MSU Press
ISBN : 9780870139543
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File Download : 224 page
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James Baldwin’s Later Fiction examines the decline of Baldwin’s reputation after the middle 1960s, his tepid reception in mainstream and academic venues, and the ways in which critics have often mis-represented and undervalued his work. Scott develops readings of Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Just Above My Head that explore the interconnected themes in Baldwin’s work: the role of the family in sustaining the arts, the price of success in American society, and the struggle of black artists to change the ways that race, sex, and masculinity are represented in American culture. Scott argues that Baldwin’s later writing crosses the cultural divide between the 1950s and 1960s in response to the civil rights and black power movements. Baldwin’s earlier works, his political activism and sexual politics, and traditions of African American autobiography and fiction all play prominent roles in Scott’s analysis.

Author : J. Young
Genre : Religion
Publisher : Springer
ISBN : 9781137454348
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File Download : 222 page
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This book focuses on Baldwin's experiences as a gifted black writer who fought valiantly against racism and wrote openly about homosexual relationships. Baldwin's God is a 'mysteriously impersonal' force he calls love- 'something . . . like a fire, like the wind, something which can change you.'

Author : Conseula Francis
Genre : Literary Criticism
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN : 9781571133250
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 175 page
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Examines the major divisions in criticism of this major African American writer, paying particular attention to the way each critical period defines Baldwin and his work for its own purposes.

Author : Gale, Cengage Learning
Genre : Literary Criticism
Publisher : Gale, Cengage Learning
ISBN : 9781410356918
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File Download : 18 page
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A Study Guide for James Baldwin's "The Rockpile," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

Author : Gale, Cengage Learning
Genre : Literary Criticism
Publisher : Gale, Cengage Learning
ISBN : 9781410339720
Type book : PDF, Epub, Kindle and Mobi
File Download : 19 page
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A Study Guide for James Baldwin's "The Amen Corner," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.