The Cross of Redemption

Title: The Cross of Redemption
Author: James Baldwin
Essays: 1693365
ISBN: 9780307275967
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2011
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Section: Literary Collections | American | African American & Black
Condition Note: New from the publisher
Publisher Description: From one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the past century--a collection of essays, articles, reviews, and interviews that have never before been gathered in a single volume.

"An absorbing portrait of Baldwin's time--and of him." --New York Review of Books

James Baldwin was an American literary master, renowned for his fierce engagement with issues haunting our common history. In The Cross of Redemption we 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 Redemption is 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, "If van Gogh was our nineteenth-century artist-saint, Baldwin [was] our twentieth-century one."