Amy J. Elias is Chancellor’s Professor and Director of the Denbo Center for Humanities and the Arts at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is the author of
“You Pay for Your Life with Your Life”: James Baldwin's Search for Jimmy Baldwin, 1969–1972
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Published:January 2025
Ed Pavlić, 2025. "“You Pay for Your Life with Your Life”: James Baldwin's Search for Jimmy Baldwin, 1969–1972", Speculative Light: The Arts of Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin, Amy J. Elias
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In this chapter, Ed Pavlić accounts for the interlude in James Baldwin's life between leaving Hollywood in 1969 and the summer of 1970—immediately before his full-time residence in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, where he would complete No Name in the Street. Baldwin aimed to retreat from his public and moment-by-moment engagement with American racial politics so that he could assess what had happened during the 1960s, reengage his private life, and figure out where to go next. The chapter covers his time in Istanbul, including the months in which he lived with Beauford Delaney, and is based on letters Baldwin wrote to his brother David during that time.
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