“If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you’re not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.” -James Baldwin
“The bottom line is this: You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it…If there is no moral question, there is no reason to write. I’m an old-fashioned writer and, despite the odds, I want to change the world”
“BALDWIN: It isn’t even a question of keeping yourself happy. It’s a question of keeping yourself in some kind of clear relationship, more or less, to the force which feeds you. Some days you’re happy, some days you ain’t. But somehow we have to deal with that on the simplest level. Bear in mind that this person facing you is a person like you. They’re going to go home and do whatever they do just like you. They’re as alone as you are.
GIOVANNI: Because that becomes a responsibility, doesn’t it?
BALDWIN: Well, it’s called love, you know.
GIOVANNI: We agree. Love is a tremendous responsibility.
BALDWIN: It’s the only one to take, there isn’t any other.”]
When James Baldwin said “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace” and when Fred Rogers said “Love is at the root of everything, all learning, all relationships; love, or the lack of it” and when Francisco X. Alarcón said “Love, if it isn’t for everyone, it isn’t enough”
“The bottom line is this: You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it…If there is no moral question, there is no reason to write. I’m an old-fashioned writer and, despite the odds, I want to change the world”
[Image: Front Cover of the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Giovanni’s Room, the 1956 novel by James Baldwin. It features the silhouettes of two men and the legs of a woman]
Fuck memes and placation I Need some real conversation Fuck the streets and demonstrations Been there felt like time wasting Need some real legislation Need to soul craft, need to combat opprayssion Always a risk, contract power you hating Rather be dead than afraid MLK Claim innocence thats a crime get it straight Screamin James Baldwin right out the gate Screaming Jay Hawkins determined our fate We all under a spell no genjutsu can break Maybe it’s balance we need Playing candy crush soaking in Adolph Reed Getting crucified for my beliefs We all wanna rush, criticize those who at ease Say they ain’t do enough, I just need to do less Complacency is still a threat Work smarter not harder the gest See past the headlines go straight for the chest Never gonna hold my breathe Never gonna hold my tongue Each generation so young Don’t know no better til the damage is done Going to war with some grace The risk of love is to hate
“This past, the Negro’s past, of rope, fire, torture, castration, infanticide, rape; death and humiliation: fear by day and night, fear as deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that he was worthy of life, since everyone around him denied it; sorrow for his women, for his kinfolk, for his children, who needed his protection, and whom he could not protect; rage, hatred, and murder, hatred for white men so deep that it often turned against him and his own, and made all love, all trust, all joy impossible-this past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful. I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering-enough is certainly as good as a feast-but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are.”
