The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings - Paperback

by James Baldwin (Author), Randall Kenan (Editor)

From one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the past century--a collection of essays, articles, reviews, and interviews that have never before been gathered in a single volume.

"An absorbing portrait of Baldwin's time--and of him." --New York Review of Books

James Baldwin was an American literary master, renowned for his fierce engagement with issues haunting our common history. In The Cross of Redemption we have Baldwin discoursing on, among other subjects, the possibility of an African-American president and what it might mean; the hypocrisy of American religious fundamentalism; the black church in America; the trials and tribulations of black nationalism; anti-Semitism; the blues and boxing; Russian literary masters; and the role of the writer in our society.

Prophetic and bracing, The Cross of Redemption is a welcome and important addition to the works of a cosmopolitan and canonical American writer who still has much to teach us about race, democracy, and personal and national identity. As Michael Ondaatje has remarked, "If van Gogh was our nineteenth-century artist-saint, Baldwin [was] our twentieth-century one."

Author Biography

James Baldwin was born in 1924 and died in 1987. Among his more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction are Giovanni's Room, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, and The Fire Next Time.

Randall Kenan is the author of, among other books, the novel A Visitation of Spirits and the short story collection Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. He teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.