American · 1924–1987
James Baldwin wrote about race, sexuality, and America with a moral urgency that made him one of the twentieth century's essential voices. His debut novel "Go Tell It on the Mountain" drew on his Harlem childhood and Pentecostal upbringing. Baldwin's essays—collected in "Notes of a Native Son" and "The Fire Next Time"—confronted white America with truths it preferred not to hear. Expatriate years in Paris gave him distance without diminishing his engagement with American racism.