The Cross of Redemption Uncollected Writings

The Cross of Redemptionis a revelation by an American literary master: a gathering of essays, articles, polemics, reviews, and interviews that have never before appeared in book form. James Baldwin was one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the past century, renowned for his fierce engagement with issues haunting our common history. In The Cross of Redemptionwe have Baldwin discoursing on, among other subjects, the possibility of an African-American president and what it might mean; the hypocrisy of American religious fundamentalism; the black church in America; the trials and tribulations of black nationalism; anti-Semitism; the blues and boxing; Russian literary masters; and the role of the writer in our society. Prophetic and bracing, The Cross of Redemptionis a welcome and important addition to the works of a cosmopolitan and canonical American writer who still has much to teach us about race, democracy, and personal and national identity. As Michael Ondaatje has remarked, #x1C;If van Gogh was our nineteenth-century artist-saint, Baldwin [was] our twentieth-century one.#x1D; From the Hardcover edition.

INTRODUCTION
 
Looking for James Baldwin
 
ESSAYS AND SPEECHES
 
Mass Culture and the Creative Artist: Some Personal Notes
A Word from Writer Directly to Reader
From Nationalism, Colonialism, and the United States: One Minute
     to Twelve—A Forum
Theater: The Negro In and Out
Is A Raisin in the Sun a Lemon in the Dark? 
As Much Truth as One Can Bear 
Geraldine Page: Bird of Light 
From What’s the Reason Why?: A Symposium by Best-Selling
     Authors: James Baldwin on Another Country 
The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity 
We Can Change the Country 
Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare 
The Uses of the Blues 
What Price Freedom? 
The White Problem 
Black Power 
The Price May Be Too High  
The Nigger We Invent  
Speech from the Soledad Rally  
A Challenge to Bicentennial Candidates  
The News from All the Northern Cities Is, to Understate It, Grim;
     the State of the Union Is Catastrophic  
Lorraine Hansberry at the Summit  
On Language, Race, and the Black Writer  
Of the Sorrow Songs: The Cross of Redemption  
Black English: A Dishonest Argument  
This Far and No Further  
On Being White . . . and Other Lies  
Blacks and Jews  
To Crush a Serpent  
 
PROFILES
 
The Fight: Patterson vs. Liston  
Sidney Poitier  

LETTERS
 
Letters from a Journey  
The International War Crimes Tribunal  
Anti-Semitism and Black Power  
An Open Letter to My Sister Angela Y. Davis  
A Letter to Prisoners  
The Fire This Time: Letter to the Bishop  
 
FOREWORDS AND AFTERWORDS
 
A Quarter-Century of Un-Americana  
Memoirs of a Bastard Angel: A Fifty-Year Literary and Erotic Odyssey
     by Harold Norse  
The Negro in New York: An Informal Social History, 1626–1940, edited by Roi
     Ottley and William J. Weatherby  
Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether  
A Lonely Rage by Bobby Seale  
 
BOOK REVIEWS
 
Best Short Stories by Maxim Gorky  
Mother by Maxim Gorky 
The Amboy Dukes by Irving Shulman  
The Sure Hand of God by Erskine Caldwell  
The Sling and the Arrow by Stuart Engstrand 
Novels and Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson, edited by V. S. Pritchett;
     and Robert Louis Stevenson by David Daiches  
Flood Crest by Hodding Carter 
The Moth by James M. Cain  
The Portable Russian Reader, edited by Bernard Guilbert Guerney  
The Person and the Common Good by Jacques Maritain 
The Negro Newspaper by Vishnu V. Oak; Jim Crow America by Earl
     Conrad; The High Cost of Prejudice by Bucklin Moon; The Protestant
     Church and the Negro by Frank S. Loescher; Color and Conscience by
     Buell G. Gallagher; From Slavery to Freedom by John Hope Franklin;
     and The Negro in America by Arnold Rose  
The Cool World by Warren Miller  
Essays by Seymour Krim  
The Arrangement by Elia Kazan  
A Man’s Life: An Autobiography by Roger Wilkins  
 
FICTION
 
The Death of a Prophet  
 
SOURCES