Showing results by author "James Baldwin" in All Categories

At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement with this eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Time stands as one of the essential works of our literature.

Told through the eyes of Tish, a 19-year-old girl in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and is imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions - affection, despair, and hope.

Before being conscripted to fight in the Total War, Private Hector Park had a shattered family, a collection of old video games, and a promising career as a motorcycle stuntman. Now, he is dying from a virus threatening humankind with extinction. He has three days to live. When Hector’s brother contacts him after years of hostile silence, Hector goes to try and make peace. But his brother offers him something even better: the chance to cheat death by joining him in Archemi, a full-immersion fantasy VR-RPG video game.

Originally published in 1953, Go Tell It on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem.

James Baldwin's groundbreaking novel with a new introduction, Giovanni's Room is set in the Paris of the 1950s, where a young American expatriate finds himself caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality. David has just proposed marriage to his American girlfriend, but while she is away on a trip he becomes involved in a doomed affair with a bartender named Giovanni.

When Another Country appeared in 1962, it caused a literary sensation. James Baldwin's masterly story of desire, hatred and violence opens with the unforgettable character of Rufus Scott, a scavenging Harlem jazz musician adrift in New York. Self-destructive, bad and brilliant, he draws us into a Bohemian underworld pulsing with heat, music and sex, where desperate and dangerous characters betray, love and test each other to the limit.

Legendary tales of the lives of famous people and historic episodes. Of these 50 stories, some have historical value, some are useful as giving point to certain great moral truths, and others are intended only to amuse. A few of these stories are from very ancient sources and are current in the literature of many lands, while many of more recent origin have come to us through the ballads and folk tales of the English people. Nearly all are frequently alluded to in poetry and prose.

As reward for stopping a serial killer and restoring the Kingdom of Vlachia to its rightful ruler, Dragozin Hector and his queen dragon, Karalti, have earned a noble title, a castle, and land of their own. There’s only one problem – it’s occupied. By a freaking elder vampire. Not only has the vampire unleashed the blight of undeath across the land, but Hector's nemesis is on the warpath. His mission? To steal Karalti, kill a god, and use their combined power to become the Insane God-Emperor of Archemi.

The stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this novel with a stunning, unforgettable experience. Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the homosexual passion of Giovanni's Room, and to the political fire that inflames his nonfiction work.

Before being conscripted to fight in the Total War, Private Hector Park had a shattered family, a collection of old video games, and a promising career as a motorcycle stuntman. Now, he is dying from a virus threatening humankind with extinction. He has three days to live. When Hector’s brother contacts him after years of hostile silence, Hector goes to try and make peace. But his brother has an offer even more unbelievable than reconciliation: the chance to cheat death by joining him in Archemi, a full-immersion fantasy VR-RPG video game.

Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin is a collection of short stories that give a snapshot into the life of a legendary hero or an event in history. Hear how Alexander the Great tamed Bucephalus, the kindness of Doctor Goldsmith, William Tell, George Washington and his hatchet, King Alfred as well as many other interesting tales.View our full collection of podcasts at our website: https://www.solgoodmedia.com or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribeThis is a Librivox Recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain.

After kicking an unholy amount of undead ass, Hector and his dragon have new goal: to revive the war-torn province of Myzsno, preferably before their nemesis arrives with his army and a legion of Drachan, demonic dragons that would make even H. P. Lovecraft scream in terror.

"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their heads above water.

Two weeks ago, Hector Park cheated death by uploading his mind to the ultra-immersive fantasy RPG game, Archemi. After exposing the rotten heart of an order of dragon knights, he’s now on the run with a young queen dragon who could one day become the most powerful mount in the game. To get strong enough to face their enemies, they need a quest - a big one. Fortunately, trouble has a way of finding Hector, and it does - in the form of a series of brutally murdered priests, a king in desperate need of a hero, and a beautiful, fiery berserker.

Ignas Corvinus, ruler of Vlachia, has been captured by his worst enemies. A puppet ruler has been installed to lead the most powerful nation in Archemi, and he's doing his best to blame Hector Park, his dragon Karalti, and their allies for the world's problems.

Baldwin's personal reflections on movies gathered here in a book-length essay are also a probing appraisal of American racial politics. Offering an incisive look at racism in American movies and a vision of America's self-delusions and deceptions, Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist.

James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name records the last months of this famed American writer's 10-year self-exile in Europe, his return to America and to Harlem, and his first trip south at the time of the school integration battles. It contains Baldwin's controversial and intimate profiles of Norman Mailer, Richard Wright, and Ingmar Bergman. And it explores such varied themes as the relations between blacks and whites, the role of blacks in America and in Europe, and the question of sexual identity.

A showdown of titanic proportions is developing in Archemi. Kingdoms are falling like dominoes to the self-styled Emperor of Nothing and his swelling armies. Hector Park and his Queen dragon Karalti stand in their way. Linked by an unbreakable bond, they are the Paragons, heroes who are destined to overcome the dark forces mustering on the horizon, or die trying.

Across Islands and Oceans is the memoir of 25 year-old James Baldwin and his epic two-year, solo circumnavigation in Atom, his trusty but aging 28-foot sailboat.

Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, Another Country tells the story of the suicide of jazz-musician Rufus Scott and the friends who search for an understanding of his life and death, discovering uncomfortable truths about themselves along the way. Another Country is a work that is as powerful today as it was 40 years ago - and expertly narrated by Dion Graham.