are a number of interviews, reviews, articles, es-
says, full-length studies, biographies, and literary
biographies of Baldwin. Likewise, Baldwin has
been the subject of many doctoral dissertations,
conference presentations, and symposia. His work
continues to be in print and appears as part of the
Library of America series.
Clearly, James Baldwin was one of the most
important writer/activists of the 20th century. He
never wavered from what he perceived as the es-
sential role of the artist—to expose the truth and
present it for consumption—and he never abdi-
cated his responsibility as one who was charged
by his gift of talent to serve humankind through
his art. More to the point, Baldwin occupied an
important place in the continuing development of
the black masculinist tradition in African-Ameri-
can writing by both extending and transcending
protest literature. He died in France in 1987.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Campbell, James. Talking at the Gates. New York: Vi-
king, 1991.
Leeming, David. James Baldwin. New York: Knopf,
1994.
Miller, Quentin, ed. Re-Viewing James Baldwin:
Things Not Seen. Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 2000.
O’Daniel, Therman B., ed. James Baldwin: A Critical
Evaluation. Washington, D.C.: Howard University
Press, 1981.
Troupe, Quincy, ed. James Baldwin: A Legacy. New
York: Touchstone, 1989.
Weatherby, W. J. James Baldwin: Artist on Fire. New
York: Laurel, 1989.
Warren J. Carson
“Ballad of Remembrance, A”
Robert Hayden (1948, 1962)
Transcending the didacticism of ROBERT HAYDEN’s
Heart-Shape in the Dust (1940), “A Ballad of Re-
membrance” presages his later modernist ex-
perimentation. Occasioned by Hayden’s 1946
encounter in New Orleans with Mark Van Doren,
“A Ballad”—first published in 1948 and revised
and published again in 1962—dramatizes Hayden’s
effort to confront the legacy of slavery that threat-
ened to silence the poet’s voice.
“A Ballad’s” surrealistic imagery depicts a Mardi
Gras tradition, a parade led by a degradingly comic
Zulu king figure:Quadroon mermaids, Afro angels, black
saints
balanced upon the switchblades of that air
and sang.... (1–3)A quantifier central to America’s system of chat-
tel slavery, “Quadroon” posits “race,” a tenacious
historical artifact, as a natural division of human
existence. “Quadroon” renders the biracial female
slave’s body as exotically monstrous—it is one-
quarter “Negro” and three-quarters “other”—even
before the word “mermaid” is juxtaposed to inter-
vene. The 1948 version associates the “Quadroon
mermaids” with “the minotaurs of edict” (38).
Slavery’s institutions and their Jim Crow succes-
sors monstrously split humanity, defining some
individuals as only partially human. Institutions
policed and citizens internalized such division,
rendering New Orleans a “schizoid city” (42).
Singing as “mermaids,” “angels,” and “saints,”
marchers leave humanity silent, proclaiming and
inscribing slavery’s enduring influence. Echoing
this song, the “Zulu king” and “gun-metal priest-
ess” perpetuate their burdensome legacy and his-
tory: The line “Accommodate, muttered the Zulu
king” suggests a grotesque attempt to personify
racism’s caricatures (20). With almost silenced
voice (mutter derives from the Latin for “mute”),
oppression speaks. Embracing the inhumanity
racism fantasizes, the priestess ironically voices her
capture by the racism she would protest:Hate, shrieked the gun-metal priestess
from her spiked bellcollar curved like a
fleur-de-lis:
As well have a talon as a finger, a muzzle
as a mouth.... (23–25).After the parade disperses, the “dance,” extend-
ing the past into the present, “continued—now“Ballad of Remembrance, A” 29