No Name in the Street [Paperback]

This stunningly personal document and extraordinary history of the turbulent sixties and early seventies displays James Baldwin's fury and despair more deeply than any of his other works.  In vivid detail he remembers the Harlem childhood that shaped his early conciousness, the later events that scored his heart with pain—the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his retum to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face.“More eloquent than W. E. B. DuBois, more penetrating than Richard Wright.... It contains truth that cannot be denied.” —The Atlantic Monthly“Characteristically beautiful.... He has not himself lost access to the sources of his being–which is what makes him read and awaited by perhaps a wider range of people than any other major American writer.” —The NationJames Baldwin was born in 1924 and educated in New York. He is the author of more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, includingGo Tell It on the Mountain,Notes of a Native Son,Giovanni's Room,Nobody Knows My Name,Another Country, andThe Fire Next Time. Among the awards he received are a Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Partisan Review Fellowship, and a Ford Foundation grant. He was made a Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1986. Baldwin died in 1987."That is a good idea," I heard my mother say. She was staring at a wad of black velvet, which she held in her hand, and she carefully placed this bit of cloth in a closet. We can guess how old I must have been from the fact that for years afterward I thought that an "idea" was a piece of black velvet.Much, much, much has been blotted out, coming back only lately in bewildering and untrustworthy flashes. I must have been about five, I should think, when I made my connection between ideas alC.