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0cb4bf4
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Oi anthropoi pou thumountai trelainontai apo ton pono,ton pono na anabionoun aionios ton thanato tes athootetas tous.Oi anthropoi pou xekhnoun pathainoun mia allou eidous trela,ten trela tes arneses tou ponou kai tou misous tes athootetas.
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James Baldwin |
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60ce1c5
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But, in the end, it is the threat of universal extinction hanging over all the world today that changes, totally and forever, the nature of reality and brings into devastating question the true meaning of man's history. We human beings now have the power to exterminate ourselves; this seems to be the entire sum of our achievement.
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James Baldwin |
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d91f19d
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The energy that was buried with the rise of the Christian nations must come back into the world; nothing can prevent it. Many of us, I think, both long to see this happen and are terrified of it, for though this transformation contains the hope of liberation, it also imposes a necessity for great change. But in order to deal with the untapped and dormant force of the previously subjugated, in order to survive as a human, moving, moral weigh..
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James Baldwin |
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ea7b1d2
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The aim of the dreamer, after all, is merely to go on dreaming and not be molested by the world. His dreams are his protection against the world. But the aims of life are antithetical to those of the dreamer, and the teeth of the world are sharp.
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James Baldwin |
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2a880b7
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A mob is not autonomous: it executes the real will of the people who rule the State. The slaughter in Birmingham, Alabama, for example, was not merely the action of a mob.
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mob-mentality
usa
race
state
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James Baldwin |
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42d8db5
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And these nights were being acted out under a foreign sky, with no one to watch, no penalties attached--it was this last fact which was our undoing for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom. I suppose this was why I asked her to marry me: to give myself something to be moored to. Perhaps this was why, in Spain, she decided that she wanted to marry me. But people can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers ..
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James Baldwin |
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e311bb8
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He looked like a baby, his mouth half open, his cheek flused, his curly hair darkening the pillow and half hiding his damp round forehead and his long eyelashes glinting slightly in the summer sun. We were both naked and the sheet we had used as a cover was tangled around our feet. Joey's body was brown, was sweaty, the most beautiful creation I had ever seen til then. I would have touched him to wake him up but something stopped me. I was ..
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James Baldwin |
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983ec8f
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It was Southern, therefore, to put it brutally, because of the history of America--the United States of America: and small black boys and girls were now paying for this holocaust. They were attempting to go to school. They were attempting to get an education, in a country in which education is a synonym for indoctrination, if you are white, and subjugation, if you are black. It was rather as though small Jewish boys and girls, in Hitler's G..
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James Baldwin |
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3e1163c
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Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.
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James Baldwin |
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c6cb532
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People, even if they are so thoughtless as to be born black, do not come into this world merely to provide mink coats and diamonds for chattering, trivial, pale matrons, or genocidal opportunities for their unsexed, unloved, and, finally, despicable men--oh, pioneers! There will be bloody holding actions all over the world, for years to come: but the Western party is over, and the white man's sun has set. Period.
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no-name-in-the-street
post-imperialism
imperialism
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James Baldwin |
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64aa40e
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I think that the past is all that makes the present coherent, and further, that the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.
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James Baldwin |
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e61abf7
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Maybe it's because you see people differently than you saw them before your trouble started. Maybe you wonder about them more, but in a different way, and this makes them very strange to you. Maybe you get scared and numb, because you don't know if you can depend on people for anything, anymore.
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trouble
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James Baldwin |
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138292b
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Vile as I am," states one of the characters in Dostoevski's The Idiot, "I don't believe in the wagons that bring bread to humanity. For the wagons that bring bread to humanity, without any moral basis for conduct, may coldly exclude a considerable part of humanity from enjoying what is brought; so it has been already."
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James Baldwin |
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14e4be7
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On this particular night, we were free and we had decided to treat ourselves to a really fancy, friendly dinner. There we were, at the table, all dressed up, and we'd ordered everything, and we were having a very nice time with each other. The headwaiter came, and said there was a phone call for me, and Gloria rose to take it. She was very strange when she came back--she didn't say anything, and I began to be afraid to ask her anything. The..
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James Baldwin |
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2ee20d6
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It is really quite impossible to be affirmative about anything which one refuses to question; one is doomed to remain inarticulate about about anything which one hasn't, by an act of the imagination, made one's own.
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questions
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James Baldwin |
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d380870
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It's funny about people. Just before something happens, you almost know what it is. You do know what it is, I believe. You just haven't had the time--and now you won't have the time--to say it to yourself.
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James Baldwin |
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568555f
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If Americans were not so terrified of their private selves, they would never have needed to invent and could never have become so dependent on what they still call "the Negro problem." This problem, which they invented in order to safeguard their purity, has made of them criminals and monsters, and it is destroying them; and this not from anything blacks may or may not be doing but because of the role a guilty and constricted white imaginat..
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James Baldwin |
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45e6188
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Malcolm considered himself to be the spiritual property of the people who produced him. He did not consider himself to be their saviour, he was far too modest for that, and gave that role to another; but he considered himself to be their servant and in order not to betray that trust, he was willing to die, and died. Malcolm was not a racist, not even when he thought he was. His intelligence was more complex than that; furthermore, if he had..
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James Baldwin |
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b20b438
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People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior
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James Baldwin |
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2e6de66
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His body, which I had come to know so well, glowed in the light and charged and thickened the air between us. Then something opened in my brain, a secret, noiseless door swung open, frightening me: it had not occurred to me until that instant that, in fleeing from his body, I confirmed and perpetuated his body's power over me.
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James Baldwin |
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f1038f4
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Freedom is hard to bear. It can be objected that I am speaking of political freedom in spiritual terms, but the political institutions of any nation are always menaced and are ultimately controlled by the spiritual state of that nation. We are controlled here by our confusion, far more than we know, and the American dream has therefore become something much more closely resembling a nightmare, on the private, domestic, and international lev..
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James Baldwin |
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44095b2
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The paradox, and a fearful paradox it is, is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere on any continent as long as he is unwilling to accept his past. To accept one's past--one's history--is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
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James Baldwin |
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7d58c47
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Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs;
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James Baldwin |
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f909de4
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To accept one's past--one's history--is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
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James Baldwin |
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f9283ee
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They are just dirty, all of them, low and cheap and dirty.' He stretched out his hand and pulled me down to the floor beside him. 'All except you. Tous, sauf toi.' He held my face between his hands and I supposed such tenderness has scarcely ever produced such terror as I then felt. 'Ne me laisse pas tomber, je t'en prie,' he said, and kissed me, with a strange insistent gentleness on the mouth.
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James Baldwin |
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ce4813c
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We should certainly know by now that it is one thing to overthrow a dictator or repel an invader and quite another thing really to achieve a revolution. Time and time and time again, the people discover that they have merely betrayed themselves into the hands of yet another Pharaoh, who, since he was necessary to put the broken country together, will not let them go. Perhaps, people being the conundrums that they are, and having so little d..
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James Baldwin |
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59c4bfd
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Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the on..
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James Baldwin |
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c8d0f38
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The innocent brightness of a new-born day Is lovely yet: The clouds that gather round the setting sun 19 Do take a sober coloring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
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James Baldwin |
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233c0e7
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To Americans, time always sounds like a parade chez vous [at your house], a triumphant parade, like armies with banners entering a town . . . as though with enough time and all that fearful energy and virtue you people have, everything will be settled, solved, put in its place. . . . I mean all the serious, dreadful things, like pain and death and love, in which you Americans do not believe.
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James Baldwin |
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64a7b81
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I feel in myself now a faint, a dreadful stirring of what so overwhelmingly stirred in me then, great thirsty heat, and trembling, and tenderness so painful I thought my heart would burst. But out of this astounding, intolerable pain came joy; we gave each other joy that night.
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literature
james-baldwin
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James Baldwin |
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16af428
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The Americans have no sense of doom, none whatever. They do not recognize doom when they see it.
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giovanni-s-room
james-baldwin
cultural
doom
blind
americans
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James Baldwin |
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2e19a82
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The world should listen then, as I am listening now.
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James Baldwin |
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a65941d
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The breathing instruments inspire, Wake into voice each silent string, And sweep the sounding lyre! In a sadly pleasing strain, 2 Let the warbling lute complain: Let the loud trumpet sound, Till the roofs all around The shrill echoes rebound; While in more lengthen'd notes and slow, The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow. Hark! the numbers soft and clear Gently steal upon the
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James Baldwin |
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0f7b468
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He made me think of home--perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
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James Baldwin |
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a21b676
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Swifter far than summer's flight, Swifter far than youth's delight, Swifter far than happy night, Art thou come and gone: As the earth when leaves are dead, As the night when sleep is sped, As the heart when joy is fled, I am left alone, alone.
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James Baldwin |
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1e5de73
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This is a formula for a nation's or a kingdom's decline, for no kingdom can maintain itself by force alone. Force does not work the way its advocates seem to think it does. It does not, for example, reveal to the victim the strength of his adversary. On the contrary, it reveals the weakness, even the panic of his adversary, and this revelation invests the victim with patience. Furthermore, it is ultimately fatal to create too many victims. ..
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James Baldwin |
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eb47ee2
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Why, you will go home and then you will find that home is not home anymore. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can always think: One day I will go home.
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James Baldwin |
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2dfb844
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People always seem to band together in accordance to a principle that has nothing to do with love, a principle that releases them from personal responsibility
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James Baldwin |
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442ac6f
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At length, she lay beside him like a burden laid down at evening which must be picked up once more in the morning.
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James Baldwin |
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0881933
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really mean that there was no love in the church. It was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair. The transfiguring power of the Holy Ghost ended when the service ended, and salvation stopped at the church door. When we were told to love everybody, I had thought that that meant everybody. But no. It applied only to those who believed as we did, and it did not apply to white people at all.
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James Baldwin |
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364dc79
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t can be objected that I am speaking of political freedom in spiritual terms, but the political institutions of any nation are always menaced and are ultimately controlled by the spiritual state of that nation. We are controlled here by our confusion, far more than we know, and the American dream has therefore become something much more closely resembling a nightmare, on the private, domestic, and international levels. Privately, we cannot ..
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freedom
compassion
politics
institutionalized-racism
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James Baldwin |
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2d7f58d
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The train will be the same, the people, struggling for comfort and, even, dignity on the straight-backed, wooden, third-class seats will be the same, and I will be the same.
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James Baldwin |
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46dbb25
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In order to change a situation one has first to see it for what it is.
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James Baldwin |
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94cd7d9
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To begin with, the room was not large enough for two. It looked out on a small courtyard. 'Looked out' means only that the room had two windows, against which the courtyard malevolently pressed, encroaching day by day, as though it had confused itself with a jungle.
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humor
giovanni-s-room
james-baldwin
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James Baldwin |