This Thursday (01), the American writer and civil rights activist, James Baldwin received a tribute with an illustration on the Google home page. The design made in the researcher’s logo is called a Doodle, and is made as a special and temporary change with the aim of commemorating holidays, events, achievements and notable historical figures.
James Baldwin is renowned for his numerous literary works, which not only cover novels, but also themes related to social justice.
Google pays tribute to James Baldwin with Doodle / Reproduction/Google
According to the Companhia das Letras portal, the writer was born in New York in 1924 and became one of the most prominent names in 20th century American literature. Among his main themes, racial struggle and issues of sexuality and identity stand out.
The oldest brother of eight siblings, Baldwin played the role of father figure from an early age, as he never knew his father and lost his stepfather while still a teenager. With the great responsibility, he didn’t even dream of going to college and so he worked manual jobs during the day and at night he played the guitar in cafes, where he also wrote for long hours, trying to fulfill his dream of becoming a writer.
According to information from the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Baldwin left the United States to live in Paris in 1948 because he could not tolerate the racial and sexual discrimination he suffered daily. There, he reconnected with Richard Wright, who mentored him early in his career, and met Maya Angelou.
Baldwin would spend the next forty years abroad, where he wrote and published most of his works.
“I Am Not Black” nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2017 and narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, it was based on one of the actor’s books, which unfortunately remained unfinished. In it, Baldwin strove to portray American social reality through the life and death of three great racial rights activists who were murdered: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., but he was unable to finish the story before his death. death.
Another great success of the writer is “O Quarto de Giovanni”, which in turn, is a classic of LGBTQIA+ literature. Released in 1956, we embark on the story of David, a young American who is in Paris waiting for his girlfriend to arrive, who is pondering whether or not she should marry him.
Amid the bars of Paris, David meets Giovanni, an Italian waiter with whom he finds himself in love and with whom he soon establishes a relationship. In addition to the novel, the book also makes us reflect on how LGBTQIA+ characters are not exempt from being sexist or reproducing other prejudices in their own lives.
Other notable works by the writer are: “If you say it on the mountain”, from 1953; “Notes from a native son”, 1955; “Terra Estranha”, from 1962 and “If Rua Beale Falasse”, from 1974. The latter also inspired the making of a film, which premiered with the same title as the literary work, in 2018.
If Beale Street Could Talk | Official Trailer | February 7th in theaters
Baldwin died in 1987 at his home in St. Paul de Vence, aged 63, after a short battle with stomach cancer.
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