I was told to bear in mind that I was a young Negro writer with a certain audience, and I wasn’t supposed to alienate that audience. When I turned the book in, I was told I shouldn’t have written it. But it’s indispensable.ĭid people advise you not to write the book so candidly? I don’t know even if it’s the most important part. The question of human affection, of integrity, in my case, the question of trying to become a writer, are all linked with the question of sexuality. If I hadn’t written that book I would probably have had to stop writing altogether. Which is more interesting than the question of homosexuality.Īnd that decision alone must have been enormously risky. It’s about what happens to you if you’re afraid to love anybody.
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Go Tell It on the Mountain, for example, is not about a church and Giovanni is not really about homosexuality. It’s the vehicle through which the book moves. Anyway, Giovanni’s Room is not really about homosexuality. But I had to do it to clarify something for myself. When I consider what a risk it must have been to write about homosexuality when you did… I made a public announcement that we’re private, if you see what I mean. You’re one of the architects of it by the act of writing about it publicly and elevating it into the realm of literature. I feel special responsibility because I would have to be a kind of witness to it, you know. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel very strongly for my brothers and sisters.ĭo you have a special feeling of responsibility toward gay people? I joined the church when I was very, very young, and haven’t joined anything since, except for a brief stint in the Socialist Party. In some sense, I couldn’t have afforded it. It’s a phenomenon that came along much after I was formed. So when we talk about gay life, which is so group oriented, so tribal… But I was alone on so many levels and this was one more aspect of it. You know, it never occurred to me to join a club. And by time I left home, when I was 17 or 18 and still a virgin, it was like everything else in my life, a problem which I would have to resolve myself. I didn’t really understand any of what I felt except I knew I loved one boy, for example. I had no idea what you were supposed to do about it. It hit me with great force while I was in the pulpit. When did you begin to think of yourself in those terms? He would not be asking all the questions. I told him quite a long, long time ago there would be two of us at the Mercy Seat. I would have to live the life he had made me to live. It was really a matter between me and God. Even when I began to realize things about myself, began to suspect who I was and what I was likely to become, it was still very personal, absolutely personal. The only one I had was homosexual and that didn’t quite cover whatever it was I was beginning to feel. You never thought of yourself as being gay? I didn’t understand the necessity of all the role playing. Even in my early years in the Village, what I saw of that world absolutely frightened me, bewildered me. I simply feel it’s a world that has little to do with me, with where I did my growing up.
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I don’t want to sound distant or patronizing because I don’t really feel that. I never understood exactly what is meant by it. The word gay has always rubbed me the wrong way. Goldstein: Do you feel like a stranger in gay America?īaldwin: Well, first of all I feel like a stranger in America from almost every conceivable angle except, oddly enough, as a black person. Titled “Go the Way Your Blood Beats,” the entire interview, from the June 26, 1984, issue, is below. The alternative was worse.… If I hadn’t written that book I would probably have had to stop writing altogether.” At one point Goldstein notes that writing openly about homosexuality in the 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room was “enormously risky,” to which the novelist, playwright, and social commentator replied, “Yeah. Please check our Privacy Policy.The Voice commemorated the fifteenth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising with a special section exploring “The Future of Gay Life.” For the lead feature, senior editor Richard Goldstein interviewed James Baldwin about his experiences as a gay, black writer in America.
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