The Outsider: A Complete Archive. Bound In Real Leather.

I think we are onto something

“All of time is meaningless here. Neither seconds nor centuries.”

I have been doing this for…years? I don’t think clicking on the username ever reliably worked for me?

not joking I would kind of like to brutally murder whoever thought it was a good idea to take away clicking on a person’s name to see their reblog and make it borderline impossible to get to the original version of a post without spending ten minutes scrolling with ctrl f

i am not taking questions at this time

Everyone needs a work gender and a home gender actually if you don't do this you can't have a work-life balance

If you have access to Libby through your library, there are some really excellent audiobooks of both his novels and some of his collected essays!

free online james baldwin stories, essays, videos, and other resources

(i believe he currently has no estate or family that can profit from his works, as the last owner of the estate was his landlady who recently died.)

James baldwin online archive with his articles and photo archives.

---NOVELS---

Giovanni's room"When David meets the sensual Giovanni in a bohemian bar, he is swept into a passionate love affair. But his girlfriend's return to Paris destroys everything. Unable to admit to the truth, David pretends the liaison never happened - while Giovanni's life descends into tragedy. This book introduces love's fascinating possibilities and extremities."

Go Tell It On The Mountain"(...)Baldwin's first major work, a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves."

+bonus: film adaptation on youtube. (if you’re a giancarlo esposito fan, you’ll be delighted to see him in an early preacher role)

Another Country and Going to Meet the Man Another country: "James Baldwin's masterly story of desire, hatred and violence opens with the unforgettable character of Rufus Scott, a scavenging Harlem jazz musician adrift in New York. Self-destructive, bad and brilliant, he draws us into a Bohemian underworld pulsing with heat, music and sex, where desperate and dangerous characters betray, love and test each other to the limit." Going to meet the Man: " collection of eight short stories by American writer James Baldwin. The book, dedicated "for Beauford Delaney", covers many topics related to anti-Black racism in American society, as well as African-American–Jewish relations, childhood, the creative process, criminal justice, drug addiction, family relationships, jazz, lynching, sexuality, and white supremacy."

Just Above My Head"Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the homosexual passion of Giovanni's Room, and to the political fire that enflames his nonfiction work. Here, too, the story of gospel singer Arthur Hall and his family becomes both a journey into another country of the soul and senses--and a living contemporary history of black struggle in this land."

If Beale Street Could Talk"Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions-affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche."

also has a film adaptation by moonlight's barry jenkins

Tell Me How Long the Train's been gone At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo's loyalty. 

---ESSAYS---

Baldwin essay collection. Including most famously: notes of a native son, nobody knows my name, the fire next time, no name in the street, the devil finds work- baldwin on film

--DOCUMENTARIES--

Take this hammer, a tour of san Francisco.

Meeting the man

--DEBATES:--

Debate with Malcolm x, 1963 ( on integration, the nation of islam, and other topics. )

Debate with William Buckley, 1965. ( historic debate in america. )

Heavily moderated debate with Malcolm x, Charles Eric Lincoln, and Samuel Schyle 1961. (Primarily Malcolm X's debate on behalf of the nation of islam, with Baldwin giving occassional inputs.)

----

apart from themes obvious in the book's descriptions, a general heads up for themes of incest and sexual assault throughout his works.

“i do taxidermy so i need to get a different scent of dish soap for my dishes” is really a sentence that only makes sense for the smallest group of people ever

fucked up in the club (reading all the wikipedia articles for indigenous north and south american dog breeds)

The contradiction between what we were playing and reality is this: Oftentimes we worked until two or three in the morning. We’re not the only company still shooting, but, yeah, we’re late. Cars are going through the gate, the arm comes down. There’s a line of cars. Then when I get there, the gate comes down and security says to me, “Open your trunk.” I said, “No. Why? All these other cars just … Why? What do you think I have in this Volkswagon Rabbit? What’s in there, the Defiant?” What I’m trying to say is that the contradiction, or the paradox of it all, we can’t get away from. You see what I mean? I wish sometimes that were true; that the fact I played Sisko would make some kind of difference on the street. No, only on the screen. The contradictions are evident. They are inescapable in a way.”

Avery Brooks, quoted in, The Fifty-Year Mission - The Next 25 Years, Volume 2, Edward Gross, Mark A. Altman