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ad00d7f
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But, Cass, ask yourself, look out and ask yourself - wouldn't you hate all white people if they kept you in prison here?' They were rolling up startling Seventh Avenue. The entire population seemed to be in the streets, draped, almost, from lamp-posts, stoops, and hydrants, and walking through the traffic as though it were not there. 'Kept you here, and stunted you and starved you, and made you watch your mother and father and sister and lo..
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James Baldwin |
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8540995
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We are in the middle of an immense metamorphosis here, a metamorphosis which will, it is devoutly to be hoped, rob us of our myths and give us our history, which will destroy our attitudes and give us back our personalities. The mass culture, in the meantime, can only reflect our chaos: and perhaps we had better remember that this chaos contains life--and a great transforming energy.
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James Baldwin |
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b2e98d8
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Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence;..
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James Baldwin |
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b7f527f
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Out of this incredible brutality, we get the myth of the happy darky and Gone With the Wind. And the North Americans appear to believe these legends, which they have created and which absolutely nothing in reality corroborates, until today. And when these legends are attacked, as is happening now--all over a globe which has never been and never will be White--my countrymen become childishly vindictive and unutterably dangerous. The
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James Baldwin |
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469c792
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Sometimes, when he was not near me, I thought, I will never let him 'Touch' me again. Then, when he 'Touched' me, I thought, it doesn't matter, it is only the body, it will soon be over. When it was over, I lay in the dark and listened to his breathing and dreamed of the 'Touch' of hands, of Giovanni's hands, or anybody's hands, hands which would have the power to crush me and make me whole again.
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sex
feelings
love
crush
homosexual
touch
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James Baldwin |
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6c3e9b7
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We cannot escape our origins, however hard we try, those origins which contain the key -could we but find it- to all we later become
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personality
psychoanalysis
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James Baldwin |
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8caf5de
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I had to get out of there for my face showed too much, the war in my body was dragging me down. My feet refused to carry me over to him again. The wind of my life was blowing me away.
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life
leave-taking
giovanni-s-room
james-baldwin
inner-turmoil
goodbye
separation
sad
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James Baldwin |
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4fe2230
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I cannot accept the proposition that the four-hundred-year travail of the American Negro should result merely in his attainment of the present level of American civilisation. I am far from convinced that being released from the African witch doctor was worthwhile if I am now - in order to support the moral contradictions and the spiritual aridity of my life - expected to become dependent on the American psychiatrist. It is a bargain I refus..
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equality
race
psychiatry
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James Baldwin |
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5b2f3fc
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He grins again, and everything inside me moves. Oh, love. Love.
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romance
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James Baldwin |
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2432910
|
This was not the man they had known, but they had scarcely expected to be confronted with ; this was, in a sense deeper than questions of fact, the man they had not known, and the man they had not known may have been the real one. The real man, whoever he had been, had suffered and now he was dead: this was all that was sure and all that mattered now.
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James Baldwin |
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87d729a
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Anyway, I have long had a very definite tendency to tune out the moment I come anywhere near either a pulpit or a soapbox.
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politics
religion
speech
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James Baldwin |
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d84670d
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You know, and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free.
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James Baldwin |
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83239c3
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Now, from this night, this coming morning, no matter how many beds I find myself in between now and my final bed, I shall never be able to have any more of those boyish, zestful affairs--which are, really, when one thinks of it, a kind of higher, or, anyway, more pretentious masturbation. People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
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James Baldwin |
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d4b8699
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all that befell: in her joys, her pipe in the evening, her man at night, the children she suckled, and guided on their first short steps; and in her tribulations, death, and parting, and the lash, she did not forget that deliverance was promised and would surely come. She had only to endure and trust in God.
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James Baldwin |
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6a58950
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This was not as real as my despairing sense that nothing was real for me, nothing would ever be real for me again - unless, indeed, this sensation of falling was reality...
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James Baldwin |
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573f429
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I went down again. My heart and I went down again. I was aware of her hand. I was aware of my breathing. I could no longer see it, but I was aware of her face.
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James Baldwin |
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035bf08
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I understood why Giovanni had wanted me and had brought me to his last retreat. I was to destroy this room and give to Giovanni a new and better life. This life could only be my own, which, in order to transform Giovanni's, must first become a part of Giovanni's room.
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James Baldwin |
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a66b2f2
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Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations. You, don't be afraid. I said that it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go behind the white man's definitions, by never being allowed to spell your proper name. You have, and many of us have, defeated this inte..
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James Baldwin |
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ee4eb08
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It had been so once; it had almost been so once. I could make it so again, I could make it real. It only demanded a short, hard strength for me to become myself again.
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James Baldwin |
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96c2b14
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For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become. It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and, in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity.
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slavery
black-in-america
civil-rights
dignity
racism-in-america
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James Baldwin |
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fb2fb37
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I saw my mother's face again, and felt, for the first time, how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet. I saw the moonlit road where my father's brother died. And it brought something else back to me, and carried me past it, I saw my little girl again and felt Isabel's tears again, and I felt my own tears begin to rise. And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as ..
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James Baldwin |
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74fe2bf
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And there was something so artless in this smile that I had to smile back.
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feelings
love
back
homosexual
emotions
smile
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James Baldwin |
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4da91eb
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The woman on the bed was old, her life was fading as the mist rose. She thought of her mother as already in the grave; and she would not let herself be strangled by the hands of the dead. "I'm going, Ma," she said. "I got to go."
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James Baldwin |
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b05c0d5
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Wash me, cried the slave to his Maker, and I shall be whiter, whiter than snow!
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James Baldwin |
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dfb99f1
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She was so incredibly beautiful--she seemed to be wearing the sunlight, rearranging it around her from time to time, with a movement of one hand, with a movement of her head, and with her smile--that, when she paid the man and started out of the store, I started out behind her.
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James Baldwin |
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95b6347
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We're getting old, he thought, and it damn sure didn't take long.
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James Baldwin |
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b42afee
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He stood for a moment on the melting snow, distracted, and then began to run down the hill, feeling himself fly as the descent became more rapid, and thinking: "I can climb back up. If it's wrong, I can always climb back up."
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James Baldwin |
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ede59c5
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There they stood, in twos and threes and fours, in their Cub Scout uniforms and with their Cub Scout faces, totally unprepared, as is the way with American he-men, for anything that could not be settled with a club or a fist or a gun.
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James Baldwin |
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bf50872
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I don't think that the Negro problem in America can be even discussed coherently without bearing in mind its context; its context being the history, traditions, customs, the moral assumptions and preoccupations of the country; in short, the general social fabric. Appearances to the contrary, no one in America escapes its effects and everyone in America bears some responsibility for it.
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understanding
racism
history
context
race-relations
race
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James Baldwin |
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19b67ad
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The black man in our midst carried murder in his heart, he wanted vengeance. We carried murder too, we wanted peace.
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James Baldwin |
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889d848
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For the history of the American Negro is unique also in this: that the question of his humanity, and of his rights therefore as a human being, became a burning one for several generations of Americans, so burning a question that it ultimately became one of those used to divide the nation.
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racism
human-rights
history
blacks
whites
american-history
race-relations
race
rights
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James Baldwin |
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bb179f5
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But art and ideas come out of the passion and torment of experience: it is impossible to have a real relationship to the first if one's aim is to be protected from the second.
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James Baldwin |
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e16b03e
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One writes out of one thing only--one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.
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James Baldwin |
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4e29230
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It is entirely unacceptable that I should have no voice in the political affairs of my own country, for I am not a ward of America; I am one of the first Americans to arrive on these shores.
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James Baldwin |
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a397d4b
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I learned in New Jersey that to be a Negro meant, precisely, that one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the color of one's skin caused in other people...That year in New Jersey lives in my mind as though it were the year during which, having an unsuspected predilection for it, I first contracted some dread, chronic disease, the unfailing symptom of which is a kind of blind fever, a pounding in the skull and fir..
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James Baldwin |
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b727f65
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The life you think you should want,' said Eric, 'is always the life that looks safest.
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James Baldwin |
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f444f3f
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That day in Chartres they had passed through town and watched women kneeling at the edge of the water, pounding clothes against a flat, wooden board. Yves had watched them for a long time. They had wandered up and down the old crooked streets, in the hot sun; Eric remembered a lizard darting across a wall; and everywhere the cathedral pursued them. It is impossible to be in that town and not be in the shadow of those great towers; impossibl..
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negative-yelp-reviews
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James Baldwin |
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0367ed0
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Now I think there is a very good reason why the Negro in this country has been treated for such a long time in such a cruel way, and some of the reasons are economic and some of them are political. We have discussed these reasons without ever coming to any kind of resolution for a very long time. Some of them are social, and these reasons are somewhat more important because they have to do with our social panic, with our fear of losing stat..
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James Baldwin |
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b0e98fd
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People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
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James Baldwin |
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4949af3
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My progress report concerning my journey to the palace of wisdom is discouraging. I lack certain indispensable aptitudes.
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James Baldwin |
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f60d6e2
|
Europeans never had the remotest intention of raising Africans to the Western level, of sharing with them the instruments of physical, political or economic power. It was precisely their intention, their necessity, to keep the people they ruled in a state of cultural anarchy, that is, simply in a barbaric state. "The famous inferiority complex one is pleased to observe as a characteristic of the colonized is no accident but something very d..
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James Baldwin |
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a1ffc5b
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And with every step I took it became more impossible for me to turn back. And my mind was empty--or it was as though my mind had become one enormous, anaesthetized wound. I thought only,
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sorrow
no-turning-back
james-baldwin
leaving
numb
grieving
sad
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James Baldwin |
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4e6c136
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Joyce is right about history being a nightmare--but it may be the nightmare from which no one awaken. People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
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past
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James Baldwin |
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031e9f0
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Why, you will go home and then you will find that home is not home any more. 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 |