“The first time James Baldwin read a book, the words clung to him like glitter,” begins this lyrical biography of the famed author and poet. He read while he took care of his eight siblings so that his mother could do laundry and clean other people’s homes; he read even though his stepfather, a preacher, shunned every book but the Bible.
Words could harm, he learned after a racist assault by police officers, but they also provided solace. He began to write his own words, and his mother and teacher encouraged his education and exposure to more books, plays, and other art.
He began to preach in his stepfather’s church, too, but tried to instill his words with “love and hope” rather than the “fiery anger” that consumed his stepfather, who was “driven by the pain of racism.” His writing skill brought him to a new school, where he made new friends and wrote for the literary magazine, but at home, “Jimmy had to hide the glitter of his new books and new friends, whom his stepfather saw as unchristian.”
Eventually, he left home and worked service jobs until he had enough money to go to France and write. The result was “a hymn born out of the words he’d nurtured his whole life,” his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, which showed the world “the conditions and fullness of Black life” and his Harlem community “saw itself glittering through Jimmy’s eyes.”
Author Quartez Harris beautifully evokes the power of Baldwin’s own words, while Caldecott Honor–winning illustrator Gordon C. James’s lush oil images offer dynamic snapshots of Baldwin’s life, often with set at angles that immerse the reader in the scene, and sometimes with words themselves spilling across the pages.
Baldwin’s queerness is not mentioned in the main text, but is discussed in the backmatter, which notes, “He was queer and felt romantic love toward both men and women,” and discusses his second novel, Giovanni’s Room, “a story of a romance between two men.”
This is the second recent picture book biography of Baldwin, and both are highly recommended. The earlier Jimmy’s Rhythm & Blues offers a little more detail about the facts of his life, including his queerness, in the story itself (as opposed to the backmatter), and takes us later into his life; Go Tell It is a little more impressionistic and focuses on his earlier years, while still giving young readers a sense of some key moments, motivations, and accomplishments (and perhaps inspiring them to learn more, starting with the backmatter).
