Named one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time by The Guardian and TIME

The essays in James Baldwin's first nonfiction collection explore what it means to be Black in America and his own search for identity

Originally published in 1955, James Baldwin's timeless and moving essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad inaugurated him as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the 20th century.

Through a mix of autobiographical and analytical essays, Baldwin delivers honest and raw revelations about what it means to be Black in America, specifically pre-Civil Rights Movement, and how, he himself, came to understand the nation.

Writing as an artist, activist, and social critic, Baldwin examines everything from the significance of the protest novel to the motives and circumstances of the many Black expatriates of the time, from his home in “The Harlem Ghetto” to a sobering “Journey to Atlanta.” He was one of the few writing on race at the time who addressed the issue with a powerful mixture of outrage at the gross physical and political violence against Black citizens and measured understanding of their oppressors, which helped awaken a white audience to the injustices under their noses.

For fans of Baldwin's well-known works or those new to Baldwin altogether, this celebrated essay collection showcases his extraordinary writing, revolutionary analyses, and prophetic insight into American culture and politics.

“The wonderful thing about writers like Baldwin is the way we read them and come across passages that are so arresting we become breathless and have to raise our eyes from the page to keep from being spirited away.”
—Edward P. Jones, from his new introduction
 
“Written with bitter clarity and uncommon grace.”
—Time
 
“A straight-from-the-shoulder writer, writing about the troubled problems of this troubled earth with an illuminating intensity.”
—Langston Hughes, The New York Times Book Review
 
“He named for me the things you feel but couldn’t utter . . . articulated for the first time to white America what it meant to be American and a black American at the same time.”
—Henry Louis Gates Jr.
 
“I owe a tremendous debt to the example of his work.”
—John Edgar Wideman
 
“Baldwin’s vision, his humor, his tragically beautiful style, make this a book [to] . . . turn to for a long time.”
—Kay Boyle, The American Scholar