blues conceived as a matrix.... The matrix is
a point of ceaseless input and output, a web of
intersecting, crisscrossing impulses always in pro-
ductive transit” (3).
In more recent works, Baker has turned to
questions of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic
hybridities in which language is multiply marked
by intersecting and mutually influential matrices.
Rap music, modernism, and the HARLEM RENAIS-
SANCE are all subjects of critique, as Baker looks
at ways in which vernacular languages existing on
the periphery of American literature come into
contact with, influence, and are influenced by a
standardized, “central” American canon. In Turn-
ing South Again (2001), Baker critiques modern
notions of citizenship as he analyzes the place of
the plantation economy in the work of BOOKER
T. WASHINGTON, and he draws parallels between
the constraints on black mobility at the turn of
the century and the contemporary “prison-indus-
trial” complex.
Unlike the conventional model of an American
academic involved only in intellectual endeavors,
Baker has been extremely active in forging rela-
tions with the multiple communities of which he is
a part. The importance of pedagogy in high school
has led to programs whereby university instruc-
tors and high school teachers exchange knowl-
edge. Baker has also stressed the need for literacy
programs in the inner cities, as well as the need
to adopt a critical stance resisting the ways racial
formation is used to continue to deprive people of
color in the United States. In short, the “invitation
to inventive play” (14) that Baker offers in Blues,
Ideology, and Afro-American Literature continues
to address imperative contemporary concerns
across the American landscape.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, Houston. Black Literature in America. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1971.
———. Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy. Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
———. Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Litera-
ture: A Vernacular Theory. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1984.
———. Turning South Again: Re-thinking Modern-
ism/Re-reading Booker T. Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 2001.
Keith FeldmanBaldwin, James (1924–1987)
James Baldwin, fiction writer, essayist, dramatist,
and poet, was born in Harlem, in New York City, in- Growing up in the inner city had a profound
influence on his life and writing, often serving as a
literary and spiritual touchstone for his later works.
Baldwin attended DeWitt Clinton High School,
where he became inspired by HARLEM RENAIS-
SANCE poet and teacher COUNTEE CULLEN. After his
graduation in 1942, he met and became influenced
by RICHARD WRIGHT. During the 1950s and 1960s,
Baldwin was not only an important fiction writer
but also became, through his provocative essays, a
reckoning force in the struggle for civil rights. Bald-
win later moved to Europe in an effort to distance
himself from America’s racism and homophobia.
Baldwin’s first novel was the autobiographically
charged GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN (1953). In
it, he introduces a young African-American male,
John Grimes, who struggles to determine his place
in an extended dysfunctional family; moreover,
John struggles to define his racial, sexual, and re-
ligious difference within a society that demands
sameness. Baldwin would examine these themes in
all of his subsequent novels and stories. Baldwin’s
next novel, Giovanni’s Room (1956), explores ho-
mosexuality in terms that few writers have matched
either before or since. David, the protagonist, is a
young American sailor who finds himself at the
crossroads of sexuality. Ultimately, David is unable
to accept his attraction to male flesh or acknowl-
edge his true feelings for Giovanni. For Baldwin,
it is not homosexuality per se that is the destruc-
tive force but the absence of honesty and truth in
human relationships, sexual or otherwise. This is
the central theme of ANOTHER COUNTRY (1962), his
third and perhaps most controversial novel.
Baldwin’s novels and stories of the 1960s, AN-
OTHER COUNTRY, Going to Meet the Man (1965),
Baldwin, James 27