James Baldwin

James Baldwin , a novelist, essayist, poet, and playwright, died in 1987. His many works include “ Go Tell It on the Mountain ” and “ Giovanni’s Room .” This piece is an excerpt of a 1962 New Yorker essay, which is published, by Vintage, in “ The Fire Next Time .”

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Letter from a Region in My Mind

reflections · November 17, 1962

Reflections, by James Baldwin, from 1962: “Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.”