James Baldwin: A 1970 Interview

In Sissy Insurgencies Marlon B. Ross focuses on the figure of the sissy in order to rethink how Americans have imagined, articulated, and negotiated manhood and boyhood from the 1880s to the present. Rather than collapsing sissiness into homosexuality, Ross shows how sissiness constitutes a historically fluid range of gender practices that are expressed as a physical manifestation, discursive epithet, social identity, and political phenomenon. He reconsiders several black leaders, intellectuals, musicians, and athletes within the context of sissiness, from Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and James Baldwin to Little Richard, Amiri Baraka, and Wilt Chamberlain. Whether examining Washington’s practice of cleaning as an iteration of sissiness, Baldwin’s self-fashioned sissy deportment, or sissiphobia in professional sports and black nationalism, Ross demonstrates that sissiness can be embraced and exploited to conform to American gender norms or disrupt racialized patriarchy. In this way, sissiness constitutes a central element in modern understandings of race and gender.

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James Baldwin

10.31338/uw.9788323551317 ◽

2021 ◽

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Short Stories ◽

Civil Rights ◽

Civil Rights Movement ◽

American History ◽

James Baldwin ◽

First Century ◽

Black Lives Matter ◽

Twenty First Century

The book is devoted to the works of James Baldwin, one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. The authors examine his most important contributions – including novels, essays, short stories, poetry, and media appearances – in the wider context of American history. They demonstrate the lasting importance of his oeuvre, which was central to the Civil Rights Movement and continues to be relevant at the dawn of the twenty-first century and the Black Lives Matter era.

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A Historical Guide to James Baldwin

Callaloo ◽

10.1353/cal.2010.0057 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 33 (4) ◽

pp. 1145-1148

Author(s):

Brian Norman ◽

Lauren A. Wilson

Keyword(s):

James Baldwin

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RELIGION AND ALIENATION IN JAMES BALDWIN, BERNARD MALAMUD, AND JAMES F. POWERS

Religious Education ◽

10.1080/0034408620570210 ◽

1962 ◽

Vol 57 (2) ◽

pp. 97-158

Author(s):

Caroline Bloomfield

Keyword(s):

James Baldwin ◽

Bernard Malamud

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James Baldwin

Black American Writers Bibliographical Essays ◽

10.1007/978-1-349-81433-6_3 ◽

1978 ◽

pp. 73-120

Author(s):

Daryl Dance

Keyword(s):

James Baldwin

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Pragmatism, Practice and the Politics of Critique

Contemporary Pragmatism ◽

10.1163/18758185-01402006 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. 212-220 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Alexander Livingston

Keyword(s):

William James ◽

American Exceptionalism ◽

James Baldwin ◽

The Political ◽

Cultural Critique ◽

Third Wave ◽

American Pragmatism ◽

Political Implications ◽

History Of ◽

Historical Practices

Colin Koopman’s Pragmatism as Transition offers an argumentative retelling of the history of American pragmatism in terms of the tradition’s preoccupation with time. Taking time seriously offers a venue for reorienting pragmatism today as a practice of cultural critique. This article examines the political implications third wave pragmatism’s conceptualization of time, practice, and critique. I argue that Koopman’s book opens up possible lines of inquiry into historical practices of critique from William James to James Baldwin that, when followed through to their conclusion, trouble some of the book’s political conclusions. Taking time and practice seriously, as transitionalism invites pragmatists to do, demands pluralizing critique in a way that puts pressure on familiar pragmatist convictions concerning liberalism, progress, and American exceptionalism.

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The Fire Inside

James Baldwin Review ◽

10.7227/jbr.7.12 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 197-204

Author(s):

Aleksander Motturi ◽

Kira Josefsson

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

New York City ◽

Short Story ◽

York City ◽

Attorney General ◽

James Baldwin ◽

The Relationship

In this semi-biographical short story, the relationship between James Baldwin and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and its culmination in their epic confrontation in New York City on 24 May 1963, is portrayed through the lens of an unidentified fictive narrator. In the midst of heightened racial tensions, Baldwin has been tasked with bringing together a delegation of prominent Black US personalities to meet with the Attorney General and share their views on the measures necessary to combat segregation and racism. The meeting has barely begun before the naivety of the administration’s view of the national situation becomes clear, and the atmosphere in the room grows increasingly strained. “The Fire Inside” has never before appeared in print. An earlier version of the story was broadcast by Swedish Radio on 29 November 2019.

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