Reading Under Cover

When I was a kid I used to sneak books from my brother’s personal “library,” which consisted of his college books stacked in the top of his closet. Many of those books changed the trajectory of my life because of their revolutionary ideas. One writer hidden in my brother’s library who had a tremendous impact on my worldview was queer writer and philosopher James Baldwin.

Baldwin’s queerness, philosophy, and politics inform his fiction and stealthily reading his work literally under covers in my childhood bedroom opened my mind in seismic blasts. Since I was sneaking the books, I had no one to talk to about what I was reading, so instead I quietly mulled over what I was learning about racism, sexuality, art, the brutality that permeates our country, my place in this country’s fabric, etc.

Baldwin has been one of my most impactful teachers. He taught me to accept myself as a bisexual human being, to reject white supremacy, to question white male authority, to create my own rules suitable to who I am, and to not give in to hate.

Baldwin was a visionary and he was courageous. He wrote about interracial and homosexual/bisexual relationships in a time when interracial marriage was mostly illegal in the U.S. and homosexuality was considered a mental illness (if you haven’t read it, check out the novel Giovanni’s Room).

In his fiction, Baldwin puts white supremacy under a microscope and asks the unspoken questions about what causes men to become sadistic in their quest for power (if you have the stomach for it, read Baldwin’s short story “Going to Meet the Man” — Trigger warning: rape, lynchings, sexual sadism, unchecked racism). In one of his most taught stories, “Sonny’s Blues,” Baldwin explores the transcendence and pain of making art, how art can capture the historical essence of a people, and how rationalism can smother the very process of making art, and more! In one brilliant story!

Later in life, I learned Baldwin had dared to debate white intellectual darling William F. Buckley about race in America. And he, a Black gay man who was mostly an expat because the U.S. rejected his genius, won the debate! As it should be.

I could go on and on and on about Baldwin’s work and his impact on me, but this a blog post, not a thesis, so I will end by summarizing: Baldwin’s work liberated me.

Happy Pride Month!

Pictured: Max standing in front of a painting of James Baldwin, which hangs in her living room. Painting by Mila Ray Duffy.