Or unlike anything anyone had written, for that matter.”Īnd yet it is still quintessential Baldwin. “I was immediately struck by just how much it was unlike anything else Baldwin had written. It’s beautiful and messy and it was, to be sure, unlike any book I’d ever seen. It’s a children’s book but it’s also not a children’s book. It tackles complex themes like drug addiction, alcoholism, police brutality, and the racist distortions of the mass media. Random fragments of text are highlighted in bold, for no apparent reason. No, actually, almost everything is inexplicable about it. There is something inexplicable about the book. Narrated by a child-like voice in the vernacular black English of Baldwin’s youth, the book’s perspective roams freely as it tells the story of three children-two black boys, four-year-old TJ and seven-year-old WT, and an eight-year-old black girl named Blinky-as they navigate the pleasures and dangers of their Harlem neighborhood. Text by James Baldwin, Illustration by Yoran Cazac. But right away the inside jacket flap’s blurb and its accompanying author images let me know that I was in for a surprise. Its cover image of a black boy wearing a blue beret as he plays ball in front of a Harlem apartment building, along with the book’s large type-size and abundance of colorful illustrations, give it the look and feel of a children’s book. Or unlike anything anyone had written, for that matter. I was immediately struck by just how much it was unlike anything else Baldwin had written. I discovered this book over 20 years ago at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library when I was an undergraduate at Yale in search of a subject for a senior thesis. Originally published in 1976 by Dial Press in the United States and Michael Joseph in London, the book’s formal innovation and subject matter-the lives of black children in Harlem-didn’t resonate with readers at the time, and it went quickly out-of-print, despite the fact that it was profoundly important to Baldwin, who called it a “celebration of the self-esteem of black children.” It is against this backdrop that a forgotten Baldwin book, entitled Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood, is being republished by Duke University Press today after more than 40 years of obscurity. Baldwin’s prophetic words on race relations continue to be quoted and engaged in national and international conversations about race with renewed force and urgency in the era of Black Lives Matter. On the front page of the New York Times came the news that the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture acquired a massive archive of Baldwin’s papers, now available for public view. Barry Jenkins, director of the Oscar-winning feature, Moonlight, announced that his next film will be an adaptation of Baldwin’s 1973 novel, If Beale Street Could Talk. I Am Not Your Negro, directed by Raoul Peck, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary. 2017 was a watershed year for the legacy of James Baldwin.
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