Crossing Identitarian Lines: Women's Liberation and James Baldwin's Early Essays

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes I thank Marianne DeKoven, Cora Koplan, Cheryl Wall, and Hillary Chute for their comments on much earlier drafts of this article, and the staff at the Schomburg Center for helping me research Baldwin's reception. The research was partially supported by grant no. FY2005-2 from the Humanities/Social Sciences Research Committee at Idaho State University, Pocatello, Idaho. 1For examinations of the homophobic attacks on Baldwin following Cleaver, see Field, McBride, Reid-Pharr, and Thomas. 2 No Name in the Street (1972) is generally considered Baldwin's tardy response. Further, Thomas suggests that Baldwin's embrace by Black Nationalism might not have happened until 1987—at Baldwin's funeral. 3I use Echols' and Evans' approximate dates. 4See Newman, Springer, and Thompson for recent examples; see Breines, Guy-Sheftall, and Radford-Hill for responses to generational claims about Black feminism amidst white feminism. 5See Armstrong, Baxandall, Curthoys, Duplessis and Snitow, Evans, and Roth. 6See Wright's introduction to Native Son, "How Bigger Was Born." Wright describes Bigger Thomas as an enlarged version of the Black man in White America's mind. Wright describes Bigger as a body part (no specific reference is given, but a phallus is certainly implied) placed in a jar of formaldehyde that Wright is able study because of its grotesque largesse. For Wright, fiction is the petri dish of character studies. 7See Wallace, Black Macho for a foundation text of this criticism. For a reading of a White woman as proto-feminist in Baldwin's Malcolm X screenplay, see Norman. 8Kaplan cites Baldwin's dialogue with Giovanni for this point. 9This is the argument of much contemporary criticism on Baldwin. Henderson, for example, argues that David in Giovanni's Room denies problematically his sexual desires by rejecting the dirtying influence of fairy figures. Giovanni dies as a result. Not incidentally, Henderson describes Giovanni's Room as a novel in which "race is present, but blackness is erased" (313). 10See Kaplan, DeGout, Harris, Henderson, McBride, McBride and Brody, Ohi, Ongiri, Shin and Judson. Generally, scholars claim that Baldwin's discussions of identities (like "race," "gender," "sexuality") pre-date later socio-political movements and theoretical schools that place "identity" at their centers and that can now better value his work. 11For Nicholson, this women's liberation CR model tends to downplay differences among women. But for women reading Baldwin, the difference between personal experiences may actually be highlighted. 12While Kaplan focuses mainly on White female characters, Harris focuses exclusively on Black female characters. The conclusions, however, are uncannily similar. Howe, Irving. "James Baldwin: At Ease in the Apocalypse." 1968. Kinnamon 96–108. Hughes, Langston. "From Harlem to Paris." 1956. Kinnamon 9-10. Kaplan, Cora. "'A Cavern Opened in My Mind': The Poetics of Homosexuality and the Politics of Race in James Baldwin." Blount and Cunningham 27–54 New York Radical Women. "Principles." 1968. Morgan 583–84. Redstockings, "Manifesto." Baxandall and Gordon, 90–1 Thomas, Kendall. "'Ain't Nothin' Like the Real Thing': Black Masculinity, Gay Sexuality, and the Jargon of Authenticity." Blount and Cunningham 55–69