Rather than write a classic biography of James Baldwin in the last cycle of his life—from
his arrival in 1970 as a black stranger in the all-white medieval village of Saint-Paul,
until his death there in 1987—I sought to discover the author through the eyes of people
who knew him in this period. With this optic, I sought a wide variety of people who were
in some way part of his life there: friends, lovers, barmen, writers, artists, taxi
drivers, his doctors and others who retained memories of their encounters with Baldwin on
all levels. Besides the many locals, contact was made with a number of Baldwin’s further
afield cultural figures including Maya Angelou, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Angela
Davis, Bill Wyman, and others. There were more than seventy interviews in person in places
as distant as Paris, New York or Istanbul and by telephone spread over four years during
the preparatory research and writing of the manuscript. Many of the recollections centred
on “at home with Jimmy” or dining at his “Welcome Table.”
Examining the spatial and temporal relationship between social vulnerability and stay-at-home behaviors in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic