Looking for the best James Baldwin books? Browse our list to find excellent book recommendations on the subject.
- The Fire Next Time (1992)
- Go Tell It on the Mountain (Vintage International) (2013)
- Notes of a Native Son (2012)
- If Beale Street Could Talk (2006)
- Giovanni’s Room (2013)
- Another Country (1992)
- I Am Not Your Negro (2017)
- Nobody Knows My Name (1992)
- Evidence of Things Not Seen (1995)
- The Devil Finds Work (Vintage International) (2011)
- James Baldwin: A Biography (2015)
- The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings (Vintage International) (2011)
- James Baldwin: The Last Interview: and other Conversations (The Last Interview Series) (2014)
- Going to Meet the Man: Stories (1995)
The Fire Next Time (1992)
A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document.
Go Tell It on the Mountain (Vintage International) (2013)
” ,” Baldwin said, “is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else.” , first published in 1953, is Baldwin’s first major work, a novel that has established itself as an American classic.
Notes of a Native Son (2012)
In an age of Black Lives Matter, James Baldwin’s essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad are as powerful today as when they were first written.
If Beale Street Could Talk (2006)
In this honest and stunning novel, now a major motion picture directed by Barry Jenkins, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice. 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.
Giovanni’s Room (2013)
Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin’s now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.
Another Country (1992)
Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions–sexual, racial, political, artistic–that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.
I Am Not Your Negro (2017)
To compose his stunning documentary film I Am Not Your Negro, acclaimed filmmaker Raoul Peck mined James Baldwin’s published and unpublished oeuvre, selecting passages from his books, essays, letters, notes, and interviews that are every bit as incisive and pertinent now as they have ever been. Weaving these texts together, Peck brilliantly imagines the book that Baldwin never wrote.
Nobody Knows My Name (1992)
Told with Baldwin’s characteristically unflinching honesty, this collection of illuminating, deeply felt essays examines topics ranging from race relations in the United States to the role of the writer in society, and offers personal accounts of Richard Wright, Norman Mailer and other writers.
Evidence of Things Not Seen (1995)
This edition of a classic work by one of America’s premier writers offers a new Foreword by Derrick Bell (with Janet Dewart Bell) to the 1995 paperback edition, and is as meaningful today as it was when it was first published in 1985. In his searing and moving essay, James Baldwin explores the Atlanta child murders that took place over a period of twenty-two months in 1979 and 1980.
The Devil Finds Work (Vintage International) (2011)
Baldwin’s personal reflections on movies gathered here in a book-length essay are also a probing appraisal of American racial politics. Offering an incisive look at racism in American movies and a vision of America’s self-delusions and deceptions, Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist.
James Baldwin: A Biography (2015)
James Baldwin was one of the great writers of the last century. In works that have become part of the American canon—Go Tell It on a Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Another Country, The Fire Next Time, and The Evidence of Things Not Seen—he explored issues of race and racism in America, class distinction, and sexual difference.A gay, African American writer who was born in Harlem, he found the freedom to express himself living in exile in Paris.
The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings (Vintage International) (2011)
The Cross of Redemption is a revelation by an American literary master: a gathering of essays, articles, polemics, reviews, and interviews that have never before appeared in book form. James Baldwin was one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the past century, renowned for his fierce engagement with issues haunting our…
James Baldwin: The Last Interview: and other Conversations (The Last Interview Series) (2014)
“I was not born to be what someone said I was.
Going to Meet the Man: Stories (1995)
"There’s no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their head above water. It may be the heroin that a down-and-out jazz pianist uses to face the terror of pouring his life into an inanimate instrument.
Best James Baldwin Books Worth Your Attention
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Devout in Doubt: Diving into Deeper Devotion
Author(s): Paul Baldwin
ID: 3523823, Publisher: Morgan James Publishing, Year: 2022, Size: 518 Kb, Format: epub
The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation
Author(s): Anna Malaika Tubbs
ID: 2909222, Publisher: Flatiron Books, Year: 2021, Size: 3 Mb, Format: epub
Nothing Personal
Author(s): James Baldwin
ID: 2976132, Publisher: Beacon Press, Year: 2021, Size: 1 Mb, Format: epub
Please note that this booklist is not absolute. Some books are really hot items according to Chicago Tribune, others are written by unknown authors. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant books you could recommend? Drop a comment if you have any feedback on the list.