An interview with James Baldwin on race in America.

Searching for meaning at Baldwin’s soon-to-be-demolished home in France.

“Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage.”

“We, the writers—a word I am using in its most primitive sense—arrived in Chicago about 10 days before the baffling, bruising, an unbelievable two minutes and six seconds at Comiskey Park. We will get to all that later.”

On being black in an all-white Swiss village.

On “the Negro’s ambivalent relation to the Jew.”

“No one works better out of anguish at all; that’s an incredible literary conceit.”

During a train ride, a man reflects on his past lovers.

"I have not thought of that boy—Joey—for many years; but I see him quite clearly tonight. It was several years ago. I was still in my teens, he was about my age, give or take a year. He was a very nice boy, too, very quick and dark, and always laughing. For a while he was my best friend. Later, the idea that such a person could have been my best friend was proof of some horrifying taint in me. So I forgot him. But I see him very well tonight."