We may think times have changed, but Baldwin’s frank discussions of race and racism are still pertinent, and his ideas about the redemptive power of literature remain poignant. Yet the reason to read James Baldwin, and any good writer regardless of color or creed, is that he can teach us how to be more human.
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?”Pain is trivial except insofar as you can use it to connect with other people’s pain,” Baldwin observed in 1963, “and insofar as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way around too; insofar as I can tell you what it is to suffer, perhaps I can help you to suffer less.” That is a theory of art and of salvation.
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