James Baldwin was born in Harlem on August 2, 1924. Shortly after his birth his mother married David Baldwin, a factory worker and Pentecostal minister. Baldwin was the eldest of nine children. Because of his troubled relationship with his strict stepfather, Baldwin turned to reading as a way to escape. Baldwin says little about his childhood, commenting only that "it is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the unrestrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again" (http://www.oceanrush.com/baldwin.html, pg. 1).

During his years at Frederick Douglas Junior High School, Baldwin edited the school paper and belonged to a literary club. It was at this time that he came to know Countee Cullen, a faculty member of school who had been one of the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. At 14, his literary career was challenged by a new vocation when he became a junior minister at a Harlem storefront church, drawing crowds bigger than his stepfather's. Three years later he decided to leave the church. After graduating from De Witt Clinton High Sch

The second essay, Down at the Cross, is an autobiographical account in three sections: recollections of growing up in Harlem, an evaluation of the Black Muslims, and a statement of personal ritual. The Harlem section analyzes the psychological condition of learning to be black and "fighting the man" in a white country. The Black Muslim portion evaluations Elijah Muhammad as a charismatic and disciplined leader who refuses to accept the white world's definitions and therefore threatens its power. The personal ritual states a series of ideas relevant to contemporary America. These ideas include "the fact that 'life is tragic'; the need to 'apprehend the nature of change, to be able and willing to change'; the importance of discarding 'that collection of myths to which white Americans cling'; the reality that blacks may not rise to power 'but they are very well placed indeed to precipitate chaos and ring down the curtain on the American dream'" (http://www.galenet.com, pg. !

In some of his later work, Baldwin, in the opinion of many, substituted thetoric and propaganda for the subtlety and honesty of his earlier essays. Despite poor review, neglect, and a widespread assumption that his time had passed, he was a productive writer of fiction and especially nonfiction to the end of his life. When diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus in early 1987, he remained cheerful and active, hosting a Thanksgiving dinner for friends and family. "He died at his home in Saint-Paul de Vence in southern France on December 1, 1987. He was sixty-three years old and had been in declining health for several months, especially after an operation for stomach cancer the previous spring. He had resumed writing with the intention and hope of completing a book about Martin Luther King, Jr" (http://www.longman.awl.com, pg. 3).

presentative, humane." Second, he embodied "the courage of one who could go as a stranger in the village and transform the distances between people into intimacy with the whole world" and "the courage to live life . . . and say what it was, to recognize and identify evil but never fear or stand in awe of it." Third, he expressed a "tenderness, of vulnerability, that asked everything, expected everything and like, the world's own Merlin, provided us with the ways and means to deliver" (http://www.galenet.com, pg. 4).

"James Baldwin's most valuable quality as a writer is authenticity" (Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 2, pg. 31). Baldwin is a very conscious artist in all his fiction. He applies his skills and intelligence to making sure the meaning will not be lost by the reader. He writes on controversial subjects about which "everybody has strong opinions and, even more to the point, deep-rooted feelings" (Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 2, pg. 31).

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