James Baldwin and Britain

Resources

Baldwin and Britain Resources:

This is just a handful of resources exploring Baldwin’s relationship to Britain and his influence on British-based artists, writers and activists, which will be developed and added to as the project progresses. It begins with the most recently published work.

  • Ruvani Ranasinha explores the influence of James Baldwin on the writer Hanif Kureishi, in Hanif Kureishi: Writing the Self, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2023).

  • Robert J. Corber, ‘“A Very Dangerous Effort”: James Baldwin’s Encounter with the BBC in 1963’, James Baldwin Review, 2023, Vol. 9, Issue 1: https://www.manchesterhive.com/view/journals/jbr/9/1/article-p112.xml?rskey=wWumIs&result=1

  • Interview with activist Leila Hassan Howe, who co-organised the Black People’s Day of Action, in 1981. Here, she speaks about Baldwin’s influence on her as a young person, and the letter she wrote to him from London, aged 18: ‘My life was made hell. You’d just hear a tirade against immigrants’ by Kehinde Andrews. Guardian, 8th October, 2020

  • Nicholas Buccola, ‘The Great Debate: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley, Jr., and the Civil Rights Revolution’, James Baldwin Review, 2020, Vol. 6 (2020), pp. 13-27. Buccola examines Baldwin’s historic debate with the conservative commentator, William F. Buckley, at the Cambridge Union, in 1965. Available here: https://www.manchesterhive.com/view/journals/jbr/6/1/article-p13.xml

  • Douglas Field explores Baldwin’s visit to Hull in 1976 in ‘James Baldwin’, African Stories in Hull & East Yorkshire, 2017. https://www.africansinyorkshireproject.com/james-baldwin.html

  • Kennetta Hammond Perry, ‘“U.S Negroes, Your Fight is our Fight”: Black Britons and the 1963 March on Washington’. in The Other Special Relationship: Race, Rights, and Riots in Britain and the United States. Edited by Robin D.G Kelley and Stephen Tuck. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

    This chapter touches upon activist Claudia Jones’ organisation of a London solidarity march to coincide with the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, and the letter Jones wrote to Baldwin seeking his endorsement for the march. (Preceding the march, Baldwin had sought to galvanise international solidarity for the event).

  • Rob Waters, ‘“Britain is no longer white”: James Baldwin as a Witness to Postcolonial Britain.’ African American Review, Winter 2013, Vol. 46, No. 4, Special Issue: James Baldwin (Winter 2013), pp. 715-730 published by John Hopkins University Press on behalf of African American Review (St. Louis University).

  • Kate Houlden, ‘Andrew Salkey, James Baldwin and the Case of the “Leading Aberrent”: Early Gay Narratives in the British Media,’ LGBT Transnational Identity and the Media, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

  • Douglas Field, ‘London Calling: James Baldwin’s Black Britain,’ Published by the American Studies Association, 2009.

  • Douglas Field, ‘The Evidence of a film not seen: An Interview with Caryl Phillips’, Wasifiri, Vol 18, 2003. Interview with British writer Caryl Phillips, which touches upon his memories of Baldwin.

  • Donald Hinds, ‘Symposium on Claudia Jones 28th September 1996’ in ‘Session 3: The West Indian Gazette’ in Claudia Jones: A Life in Exile,’ edited by Marika Sherwood, (Lawrence & Wishart, 1999). In this article, Hinds refers to Claudia Jones’s review of The Fire Next Time, which appeared in the October 1963 edition of the West Indian Gazette. (Hind’s profile of Baldwin, and review of Baldwin’s novel Another Country, also appeared in the April 1963 edition of the West Indian Gazette).