Where to start reading James Baldwin’s books

Born on August 2, 1924 in Harlem Hospital in New York City, James Baldwin grew up poor in the heart of the Great Depression, the oldest in a family of nine children – yet he would become one of America’s most significant and celebrated authors.

Throughout his lifetime as a novelist, essayist, poet and playwright, Baldwin brilliantly chronicled his tortuous relationship with his stepfather, his crisis of faith, his sexuality, and his intense desire to tell the stories that swirled around in his head. Baldwin left the United States in 1948 for Paris – “My luck was running out,” he archly asserted in a 1984 interview for The Paris Review; “I was going to jail, I was going to kill somebody or be killed” – where he became the poet who would fearlessly “describe us to ourselves as we are now”, as he put it. He willed himself into becoming one of the world’s most important writers and the most insightful critic of American democracy and race this country has ever produced.

Anyone interested in beginning a journey through Baldwin’s body of work will have to move across genres, but one can hear the distinctiveness of his voice in any form. Here are five suggested books that offer a wonderful point of entry to his writings and demonstrate his ongoing relevance to our troubled times.