Baldwin’s Life on the Left: From New York Intellectual to Disturber of the Peace
Baldwin’s Life on the Left: From New York Intellectual to Disturber of the Peace
Chapter 1 examines Baldwin’s early book reviews in magazines associated with the New York Intellectuals (Nation, Commentary, and New Leader) in order to argue that his early work and dalliance with the Young People’s Socialist League not only illuminate his early career, giving us a better sense of how he developed as a writer, but also his political views add to an understanding of leftist literary culture of the mid-1940s. The chapter then focuses on the reception of Baldwin’s second novel Giovanni’s Room in order to examine how this short novel feeds into and explores key Cold War anxieties about race and homosexuality. As a novel written by an African American featuring no black characters, Giovanni’s Room inflamed white concerns that black culture might assimilate into white American culture, and its treatment of homosexuality fed into concerns that “deviant” sexuality was a threat to American national security.
Keywords: New York Intellectuals, Young People’s Socialist League, Leftist literary culture, Cold War, homosexuality, race, Giovanni’s Room
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
