Description

‘Candid, insightful, moving . . . a memoir, a chronicle of and commentary on America’s abortive civil-rights movement’ -The New York Times

In this deeply personal book, Baldwin reflects on the experiences that shaped him as a writer and activist: from his childhood in Harlem to the deaths Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Exploring the visceral reality of life in the American South as well as Baldwin’s impressions of London, Paris and Hamburg, No Name in the Street grapples with the failed promises of global liberation movements in fearless, candid prose.

Timeless, tender and profound, Baldwin’s searing narrative contains the multiplicities of what it means to be Black in America and, indeed, around the world.

Publisher Review

He was one of our best essayists in the best American gadfly tradition — Ralph Ellison What makes his essays so compelling is that he insists on being personal, on forcing the public and the political to submit to his voice and the test of his experience and his observation — Colm Toibin If Van Gogh was our 19th century artist-saint then James Baldwin is our 20th century one — Michael Ondaatje Baldwin refused to hold anyone’s hand. He was both direct and beautiful all at once. He did not seem to write to convince you. He wrote beyond you — Ta-Nehisi Coates