With contributions from major scholars of African American literature, history, and cultural studies, A Historical Guide to James Baldwin focuses on the four tumultous decades that defined the great author's life and art. Providing a comprehensive examination of Baldwin's varied body of work that includes short stories, novels, and polemical essays, this collection reflects the major events that left an indelible imprint on the iconic writer: civil rights, black nationalism and the struggle for gay rights in the pre- and post-Stonewall eras. The essays also highlight Baldwin's under-studied role as a trans-Atlantic writer, his lifelong struggle with faith, and his use of music, especially the blues, as a key to unlock the mysteries of his identity as an exile, an artist, and a black American in a racially hostile era.

Douglas Field is Lecturer in Contemporary Literature, Staffordshire University, UK and he is the book review editor for Callaloo.

• Acknowledgments


• Abbreviations


• 1.: Introduction


• Douglas Field


• 2.: James Baldwin, 1924-1987: A Brief Biography


• Randall Kenan


• BALDWIN IN HIS TIME


• 3.: James Baldwin as Religious Writer: The Burdens


• and Gifts of Black Evangelicalism


• Clarence E. Hardy III


• 4.: Using the Blues: Baldwin and Music


• D. Quentin Miller


• 5.: James Baldwin and Sexuality:


• Lieux de Mémoire within a Usable Past


• Justin A. Joyce and Dwight A. McBride


• 6.: Challenging the American Conscience,


• Re-imagining American Identity:


• James Baldwin and the Civil Rights Movement


• Lynn Orilla Scott


• 7.: "In the Same Boat': James Baldwin


• and the Other Atlantic


• Magdalena J. Zaborowska


• Illustrated Chronology


• Bibliographic Essay:


• The Price of the Ticket:


• Baldwin Criticism in Perspective


• Carol E. Henderson