James Baldwin

American · 1924–1987

Novelist, essayist and civil rights voice, born in Harlem as the eldest of nine children, who left for Paris at 24 and spent much of his life in France. His work, from the semi-autobiographical Go Tell It on the Mountain and the gay love story Giovanni's Room to the essays of Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time, set race, sexuality, religion and family against the moral failures of American society. His short story "Sonny's Blues" is among the most anthologised in American literature.

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