To mark James Baldwin's 100th birthday, we present a series of five essays inspired by his year in New Jersey. From the circumstances that forced him there to speculations on how he'd feel about NJ today, writer L. Lo Sontag widens our purview about Baldwin like never before.
Illustration by Jess Acosta, exploring the impact that place had on Baldwin's life.
“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
― James Baldwin, Autobiographical Notes
On the occasion of his 100th birthday, James Baldwin still influences how Americans interpret themselves. His thoughts, scribblings, speeches, and writings are often discussed casually, segregated from the Universal American experience. Yet, in a reality where universal is often a proxy for White, this obscures America’s true identity and Baldwin’s place in that America.
Baldwin was a renowned writer born in Harlem. He was a renowned Black writer who anchored across the globe. He was a renowned Black gay writer with a feminist worldview. But foremost, Baldwin was a profoundly American writer. His essays are pure Americana. His writing covers experiences that exclude neither the Black nor White perspectives that created the America of the mid-20th century.
New Jersey taught Baldwin how to be an American:
“I learned in New Jersey that to be a Negro meant, precisely, that one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the color of one’s skin caused in other people…That year in New Jersey lives in my mind as though it were the year during which, having an unsuspected predilection for it, I first contracted some dread, chronic disease, the unfailing symptom of which is a kind of blind fever, a pounding in the skull and fire in the bowels…There is not a Negro alive who does not have this rage in his blood–one has the choice, merely, of living with it consciously or surrendering to it. As for me, this fever has recurred in me, and does, and will until the day I die.”
― James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (1955)
Geographically speaking, Baldwin spent his 18th and 19th years in Central Jersey. As a matter of life-twisting, he arrived in a state of New Jersey sometime between high school and the rest of his life.
Like Black America, New Jersey has been many things. One of those things is the safety valve for the petite bourgeoisie and the newly created middle-class worker manufactured after World War II. New Jersey became Suburbia: a place that was intended to be the best parts of a friendly village and the countryside adjacent to the bustle of a REAL CITY. It became a strange version of a college dormitory: bedrooms (houses), bathrooms (gas stations), vending machines (fast food restaurants). It became a place people drive through before they get to a real city, where real work gets done.
James Baldwin continues to force America to wrangle and wrestle with the idea of who is the REAL American just as New Jersey struggles with its identity: is it a city, a state, or something in between? As Black and White America are in a perpetual tango, so are New Jersey and New York City, and Philadelphia for that matter.
In this series of five essays, writer and recent Los Angeles transplant L. Lo Sontag will begin at the moment Baldwin had his mental break(through) in a fine dining establishment in Trenton; finesse the relationship between two “Native Sons,” James Baldwin and Amiri Baraka; explore Baldwin’s urbanism in the context of Robert Caro, Jane Jacobs and Jean Gottman; set sail over the Atlantic to visit Baldwin’s Paris; and then resurface into his 100th year as Sontag the Native Daughter reflects on power, race, space, the future of urbanism, and Baldwin.
A note to Baldwin, if he's reading: Happy Birthday, Jimmy! You continue to inspire and teach us, which is both a sign of where we still are and where we hope to get to. We initially planned to launch the whole series on your actual birthday (August 2, 2024), but what's the fun in that. After one hundred years of stirring our souls, you deserve better, and way more frequently. Finally, thank you for proving, with your light, that Central Jersey does indeed exist.
Read Essay 1 > From Harlem's Native Son to Jersey's Invisible Man
L. Lo Sontag is an urbanist, essayist, and poet living in the “City of New Jersey.” She, is the Inaugural Sadie T.M. Alexander Economics Fellow at The New School and a former Ethic and Equity Fellow at the Lincoln Land Policy Institute. She is the curator of La Ciclovía de Bloomfield Conversations, a series discussing the climate crisis impacts on New Jersey.
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